Much has been said and written recently about Tony Abbott’s ­alleged failures of leadership as prime minister. Yes, there were mistakes but the commentariat’s obsession with them obscures a ­record of solid achievement.
In securing our borders, finalising free trade agreements with our major economic partners and ­repealing harmful taxes, he achieved what many thought was impossible.
He was mocked for promising to “shirt-front Vladimir Putin, but no one else had really taken on the Russian despot — and, short of going to war, a robust dressing down is the strongest response …

Alcohol industry reliant on problem drinkers, say critics.
“PM”, ABC Radio National and ABC Local Radio, 20 January, 2016
TIM PALMER: The message to drink responsibly tags nearly every alcohol commercial. But research published today suggests that’s a fairly pointless message.
It shows that the majority of drinkers, as the liquor industry likes to point out, already do drink responsibly.
But that 20 per cent of Australian drinkers don’t, and they seem inured to the message – they consume three-quarters of all alcohol bought in Australia and that’s going up.
The heaviest drinkers of …

Last year my favourite Australian book was Michael Wilding’s ‘Wild Bleak Bohemia’, which shared the Non-Fiction Prize for the 2015 Prime Ministers Literary Awards — of which I was a judge.
Wilding’s finely written and scrupulously researched book deals with the life and work of the three most important writers in colonial Australia — Marcus Clarke, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall. As it happens, they are my favourite nineteenth century novelists and poets — and in that order.
C.T. Clarke, who worked for the publisher George Robertson, wrote about “The Sorrows …

For many years, even though it was a huge problem, Australia managed to ignore the epidemic of domestic violence. But since Rosie Batty was named 2015 Australian of the Year for placing domestic violence on the national agenda, it has been increasingly difficult to keep on ignoring this issue.
Yet in some areas, ignoring the pivotal role of alcohol in domestic violence remains a national blind spot. This is despite the fact that alcohol is to violence as water is to fish.
Admittedly, we would still experience some violence even if alcohol …

As many Australians munch on leftover turkey, plum pudding and Christmas cake, liberally lubri­cated with booze, this is the time of year when many people realise they cannot continue drinking ­alcohol at such high and dangerous levels and be effective citizens and members of the nation.
Thus, on or before New Year’s Eve, a lot of Aussies will pledge to cut down their drinking or abstain altogether, while many will also commit to losing weight.
But while many focus on their individual problems, representatives of business argue that the best way …

These days it is increasingly difficult to have a reasoned and thorough public debate about government policy.
So spare a thought for the members of a parliamentary committee who have to come to grips with a complex and important topic that affects all of us and is fraught with powerful emotions and deep divisions.
In Victoria, the Legal and Social Issues Committee of the Upper House is examining end-of-life choices, including voluntary euthanasia or voluntary assisted dying.
They (or their staff) have to wade through about 1000 written submissions and …

Malcolm Turnbull’s efforts to innovate our way into more employment and prosperity are to be applauded. So here’s a really innovative idea to help create more jobs. How about we let completely legal businesses that pay all their company taxes and GST share in government job creation schemes?
This week it came to my attention that the federal government bans certain legal industries from accessing job creation and wage subsidy schemes. They’re doing this simply because the moral values of the industry don’t happen to align with the moral values of …

Several young people have died recently after taking ecstasy at youth music dance events across Australia.
These tragedies attracted saturation media coverage. However it is important to point out that 15 Australians die each day from alcohol. Tellingly, one in eight deaths of Australians under 25 are caused by alcohol.
The sad reality is that illicit drugs are a helpful distraction for the liquor industry. Some commentators express astonishment that young people want to take drugs. But young people with everything to live for use drugs, including ecstasy, for …

I think most of us can agree that the standard of public debate in Australia has declined during the past few decades.
Under Liberal prime minister John Howard, we had a considered and rational response to the Port Arthur massacre. We also had considerable elements of maturity in the 1998 discussion of the GST.
Under Labor PMs Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, we had tax summits that actually meant something. Moreover, we had an informed debate about what fundamental economic and fiscal changes could mean for families, for business and for the …

Grafton Everest is a rotund, larger-than-life political larrikin from Australia’s northernmost state and has been thrust to the balance of power in the national Parliament thanks to some dubious preference whispering.
Sound familiar?
The brainchild of Griffith University history and politics emeritus professor Ross Fitzgerald, Grafton Everest from the fictional Australian state of “Mangoland first appeared in 1986 in the form of ‘Pushed from the Wings: An Entertainment.’
“I was at Griffith University during the worst periods of the Joh regime and volume two of my history of Queensland got pulped. I got …

University reform is not one size fits all. We really do need to recognise the special role that regional universities play in regional and remote Australia. Failure to do so will fail the regional economies that drive the Australian economy whether it be through traditional exports from agriculture, mining and tourism or growing ones like renewable energy, niche market advanced engineering and value added food and tourism products.
Regional Australia is difficult to service because populations are relatively small and thinly spread over large areas. It contrasts with more densely-packed …