It’s been hailed an Easter Saturday homecoming for the Sydney Swans. Tonight they take on my beloved Collingwood Magpies at the Sydney Cricket Ground in a venue change that has infuriated Pies president Eddie McGuire. But there could be far more to McGuire’s latest outrage than meets the eye.
When, just over three weeks ago, the Swans announced the relocation of three home games, including tonight’s clash, from ANZ Stadium at Homebush to the SCG, McGuire was furious that he found out through a news release. The Magpies president lambasted the …

Having for decades operated with no Indigenous members of federal Parliament, the Australian Labor Party may soon have three.
Esteemed Aboriginal leader Patrick Dodson will join Nova Peris in the Senate. On the other hand, Linda Burney , who resigned recently as deputy leader of the NSW Labor Party to contest the federal seat of Barton , could be the first Indigenous woman in the House of Representatives.
The talented Burney is likely to win Barton, which, following a recent electoral redistribution, is now notionally a Labor seat. As well, Burney will …

This powerful personal narrative is a difficult book to negotiate, not least because it comprises 309 pages of text entirely devoid of chapter numbers or headings, followed by a blank page and the acknowledgments.
But this caveat in no way means that the book — the author’s first — is not an enormously rewarding and revealing exploration of the effects of war on family life and on the human soul and psyche.
Enemy begins with a striking opening sentence: “I was born into the war still raging inside my father. Indeed Ruth …

Our national game, Australian Rules Football, cuts across all divides of class, income, ethnicity, gender, religion, race and sexual preference.
Hence contributors to my recent collection of 37 original essays, ‘Heartfelt Moments in Australian Rules Football’, range from devout atheists like myself, Dick Whitaker and Barry Dickins to believing Christians such as Geraldine Doogue, John Birt and Cardinal George Pell , who writes about his decision whether to become a priest, or to train and play with Richmond.
The reality is that not only unbelievers, but also clerics of all persuasions often …

THE IMPACT OF GRAFTON EVEREST , MOVING FORWARDS (SIC)
As avid MWD readers will be aware, last December this august (sic) publication issued its very own 2015 Summer Reading List for Nancy’s (Male) Co-owner. It was inspired by the awesomely pretentious 2015 Summer Reading List for the Prime Minister prepared by the awesomely pretentious Dr John Daley (for a doctor he is) of the taxpayer subsidised Grattan Institute in Melbourne.
In what turned out to be a remarkably successful reading list, Hendo went for the (previously) little known How To Be …

Show us some backbone, PM, or lose marginal seats
Malcolm Turnbull has had a scrappy few months. While some boosters in the media still are willing him to succeed, the lustre is wearing off and the disappointment certainly is starting to show.
The basic problem is that Turnbull had a plan to become Prime Minister but no plan for running a government.
He’s talked a lot about “agility and “due process, but in almost six months his government has done nothing of substance. Turnbull may be Prime Minister but, to all intents and …

The changes to Senate voting proposed by Malcolm Turnbull and backed by the Greens and Nick Xenophon, represent unprecedented government interference in the Australian democratic system.
For all the talk about voters having to mark six boxes above the line on the ballot paper, the new laws will still allow a mark in one box above the line to stand as a legitimate vote. So let’s not kid ourselves that this is somehow a voting system that is in any way inclusive of small parties.
For Turnbull, this legislation is an admission …

As well as being Valentine’s Day and the showing in Sydney of Tropfest, the world’s biggest short-film festival, Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the adoption of decimal currency in Australia.
But less famously, February 14 is the centenary of one of the most disgraceful events in Australian military history.
During World War I, there was a strong push by the anti-liquor movement and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union to limit alcohol consumption in Australia. This was because male drunkenness was seen to be the root cause of many social problems, including …

It’s a sad fact that most of the alcohol in Australia is drunk by a small percentage of problem drinkers.
According to a recent report of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, a fifth of all Australian drinkers consume three-quarters of the grog. The heaviest-drinking 5 five per cent , about 1 million Australians , consume more than eight standard drinks of alcohol every day, and the proportion of alcohol being consumed by heavy drinkers is increasing.
The alcohol industry has known for a long time that consumption is very uneven …

Since his corporate-style takeover of the Liberal Party in September, Malcolm Turnbull has had a charmed run.
He’s doing well in the polls. Progressives in the media see him as one of their own and those on the Right regard him as better than the Labor alternative. Hence, up to now, there’s been little scrutiny of what his government says or does.
All the pundits agree that Turnbull’s rise has lifted the government’s fortunes ahead of the next federal election and it’s tempting to see this as proof that the Coalition is …

There were only six heroin overdose deaths in Australia in 1964. But by 1997, heroin overdose deaths in Australia had climbed to 1116. Just imagine the number of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters who had suddenly lost a young loved one.
Australia’s first supervised injecting facility began operating in Sydney’s Kings Cross in 2001 in response to the epidemic of heroin overdose deaths in the 1990s.
One in 10 of all heroin overdose deaths in Australia occurred within a couple of kilometres of Kings Cross. So reducing the number of heroin …