What’s What and Who’s Who in my life and fictionby ROSS FITZGERALD

My latest fiction, Chalk and Cheese, co-authored with the marvellous Ian McFadyen of ‘Comedy Company’ fame, features two 80-year-old, politically influential, former radio stars, Bill Bradley and Ben Curran, who hate each other, but end up in the same nursing home.

A postmodernist academic at Sydney University, who to put it mildly isn’t among my greatest fans, recently told a retired colleague that their names were clearly derived from Bill and Ben, the Flower Pot Men. For those who don’t …

PROFESSOR ROSS FITZGERALD  – September 3 2025 

   It isn’t always in the headlines but in Australia our treatment of the elderly needs our urgent attention.Occasionally, politicians and others cast an eye in the direction of this subject, but it warrants so much more.So, after collaborating on a suite of political satires, my co-author Ian McFadyen and I have decided to change tack to address an issue that could well be the next big inconvenient truth – the disgrace of our treatment of the elderly.

Chalk and Cheese: A Fabrication is a …

More than 90 per cent of vapes in Australia are now supplied by the black market.“The growing black market for cigarettes, tobacco and vapes in Australia has become increasingly violent, with several homicides attributed to criminal gangs fighting for control,” writes PROFESSOR ROSS FITZGERALD.

Australia’s cigarettes are now the most expensive in the world. Excise has been increased cumulatively by more than 340 per cent in the past 20 years, clearly helping to depress consumption.But the effect of sky-high prices on cigarette consumption in recent years is less certain as smokers …

Time to get real on taxing cigarettes and restricting vapes

ROSS FITZGERALD August 23, 2025    

Australia’s cigarettes are now the most expensive in the world. Excise has been increased cumulatively by over 340% in the past 20 years, clearly helping to depress consumption for many years.

But the effect of sky-high prices on cigarette consumption in recent years is less certain as smokers switched increasingly to much less expensive illegal supplies. Excise will be increased by an additional 5% in Australia on 1 September 2025.

The unintended negative consequences of the exceedingly high …

Failed vape policy in disarray, but what to do?by Prof Ross Fitzgerald

After New Zealand in 2020 made low-risk vapes easier to buy than high-risk cigarettes, their overall adult smoking declined from 14.5 per cent in 2016 to 6.8 per cent in 2023. Photo: Kindel Media

In Australia, the availability of vapes has been severely restricted to pharmacies. In contrast, high-risk cigarettes continue to be readily available from more than 40,000 outlets. And that’s where the problem starts, says PROF ROSS FITZGERALD.

Australia’s health policy in relation to vapes is in disarray. Yet …

Switching from a failed vape and tobacco policy to a successful oneby ROSS FITZGERALD

Australia’s health policy in relation to vapes is in disarray. Yet this deeply flawed approach is currently supported by all state, federal and territory governments.

Vaping nicotine was developed in 2003 by a Chinese chemist Hon Lik – a heavy smoker who was desperate to find an effective way to quit smoking after his father died from lung cancer.Vaping was marketed in 2007 and within a few years it became increasingly popular, especially in America and the United …

Senate candidate Fiona Patten most resembles the independent senator for the ACT David Pocock, and the feisty senator for Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie.”

Former Canberran and self-styled ‘Strumpet of Patriots’ Fiona Patten is in a political comeback fight for a Victorian Senate seat against the might of Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots’ candidate and, strangely, Mark Zuckerberg, writes ROSS FITZGERALD

As the Australian voter’s penchant for independents and minor parties continues to grow, the Senate is becoming a very colourful chamber.

Accoding to Prof Ross Fitzgerald, In the federal election, there will be a …

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 …