Go Now, Mr Turnbull. Just Go
BY ROSS FITZGERALD
A prime minister who would rather not face the Parliament is a leader in terminal trouble. Let’s face it, PMs owe their position to their command of the party room and of the House of Representatives. But Malcolm Turnbull’s fear of both shows that his leadership has, at best, become a day-to-day proposition.
The government’s excuse for putting off the parliament just doesn’t wash. House leader Christopher Pyne says that all the parliament has to consider before Christmas is same sex marriage and …

The Light on the Hill and the Gink’s Revenge
by Ross Fitzgerald
Mythologising in politics rarely survives intact when confronted with the results of sober historical research.
A case in point, with strong political resonance, concerns Australian Labor Party leader Ben Chifley and his famed expression, “the light on the hill”. These words, both in the immediate post-Second World War Chifley years and ever since then in Labor circles, are intended to sum up the vision that supposedly energises and ennobles the ALP and its leaders as they strive for a fairer …

by ROSS FITZGERALD
What a mess: and for once, it didn’t start with Malcolm Turnbull. The citizenship fiasco is a consequence of the Constitution, the High Court and politicians who assumed too much. But it’s now the Prime Minister’s responsibility to fix and, so far, he’s making a complete hash of it. Even a dud isn’t responsible for everything that goes wrong. But you can rely on a dud to further muck things up.
After floundering for weeks, Mr Turnbull has now announced a process of sorts …

Surely the revelation that the president of the Australian Senate, Stephen Parry, is ineligible to hold office will sound the death knell of this stumbling, embarrassing shambles we call the Australian government.
While former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce waits for the result of the December 2 New England by-election, the existence of the Coalition government rests with four independent members of the House of Representatives: Bob Katter, Cathy McGowan, Rebekha Sharkie and Andrew Wilkie. Each has pledged to support the Turnbull government on matters of supply and against no-confidence …

Here’s the link to this week’s ‘Future Tense’ program on ABC Radio National about Tertiary Education, which features Ross Fitzgerald and others being interviewed by Antony Funnell.
The audio is available to listen to from this site as either a download or streaming audio –
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/education/9076634
This program on Tertiary Education will be first broadcast this Sunday (October 29) at 10.30am on ABC Radio National, then at 7.30pm next Wed on RN and finally at 1.00pm on RN next Friday .

ROSS FITZGERALD
The “Malcolm project”, to the extent that it’s not all about him, is actually about making the Liberal Party less conservative. Malcolm Turnbull let the cat out of the bag in London in July when he noted that Robert Menzies said: “We took the name ‘Liberal’ because we were determined to be a progressive party (and) in no sense reactionary.”
Although the Prime Minister also said “the Liberal Party stands for freedom or it stands for nothing”, contrasting this with Labor’s insistence that “government knows best”, so far the …

By ROSS FITZGERALD
Surely it is time for Australia to abandon its punitive approach to people struggling with illicit drug problems. This should include rejecting the draconian Welfare Reform Bill in its entirety.
The Senate is expected to vote on the Turnbull government’s bill on October 18, with a proposal to trial drug-testing applicants for income support, as well as including the use of a cashless welfare card for some recipients.
This trial has attracted overwhelming criticism from professional groups.
The Welfare Reform Bill also proposes some harsh exclusions for the receipt of …

Ten More Newspolls To Go…
by ROSS FITZGERALD
Thirty Newspoll losses in a row: this is the leadership test that Malcolm Turnbull used to justify his coup against Tony Abbott. Turnbull has now lost twenty Newspolls in a row and there seems to be no light at the end of his tunnel. So what does the Prime Minister do when he fails his own leadership test? This is the question that must be haunting Turnbull. And what does the Liberal Party do when its leader fails the leadership test that he himself …

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 …

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 …

When Communists Invaded Cold War Canberra
by ROSS FITZGERALD
The seemingly endless second prime ministerial stint of Liberal Party stalwart Robert Gordon Menzies from 1949 to 1966 was not, as it is now often portrayed, a period of unbroken certainty, somnolence and solidity. The first years of the Menzies restoration in particular were quite rocky.
For a start, when Menzies won the 1949 federal election, his incoming government faced a hostile Senate. Sixteen months later a double-dissolution defeat for Labor ended the impasse. But success on this front was shortly …