Stephen Eugene Clarke (‘Steve from Gordon’).
Sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous for 48 years;
House painter when it was a noble trade.
Born Sydney, November 19, 1926.
Died Sydney, September 20, 2012. Aged 85
THERE were five great loves in Stephen Clarke’s life. First, his wonderful wife, Dawn; second, his beloved daughter, Kerry; third, his adored grandson, Larry; fourth, the South Sydney Rabbitohs; and finally, and perhaps most importantly, Alcoholics Anonymous, which made everything else in his life possible and enabled him to be a sober member for 48 uninterrupted years.
Widely known as “Steve from …

SOME amazing things have been happening recently in Queensland. A little more than six months ago, the Newman government swept to office with a historic majority, devastating and humiliating the Labor government of Anna Bligh.
Informed commentators predicted the ALP would be in the wilderness for a generation as Bligh deserted the party and resigned from Queensland’s one-house parliament, forcing a by-election.
At the federal level, things looked extremely bleak in Queensland for the ALP. Indeed, polls indicated that Labor could lose all its federal seats in the state, including Kevin Rudd’s …

IN 1977 I was living in Brisbane. Under the remarkable coaching of tea-drinking Tom Hafey, my beloved team Collingwood had come from wooden spooners in 1976 to playing in the grand final.
How I would have loved to have been there (standing room was only two dollars).
For only the second time in VFL history, the premiership battle resulted in a draw.
I can still see ”Twiggy” Dunne at the 32-minute mark of the final quarter standing like an oak in a pack of seven and taking a mark Walter Mitty would have …

IN a desperate effort to hold off a leadership challenge from Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard has combined her ruthless disregard for the long-term future of the Labor Party with her ferocious desire for self-preservation, the now familiar hallmarks of her leadership.
The Prime Minister has demonstrated that she is prepared to break solemn promises, walk away from long-held principles and policies, do “whatever it takes” to cling to her job and thereby prevent a Rudd return.
There have been rumours for months that Rudd and his supporters have been making the case …

LAST September, with some fanfare, Julia Gillard promised by mid-2012 she would present a white paper on Australia in the Asian century. We are still waiting.
There is speculation its chairman Ken Henry and his team prepared a draft but it was sent back for a rework.
Whatever its fate, the federal government’s blueprint is a keenly sought addition to Australia’s engagement with Asia. This is because, effectively, Australia has no choice but to bet its future on the Asian century.
With two decades of economic instability looming in Europe and the US, …

STATE of Origin football is long dead in the Australian Football League. A thriving national competition and the reluctance of clubs to share top players for what seemed to be a near meaningless pursuit saw the state versus state exhibition brought to an end.
This is in stark contrast to the National Rugby League, where representative competition remains the pinnacle of the sport.
The AFL and its clubs are right in ignoring calls to resurrect state-based representative football and tonight at ANZ Stadium, when my beloved team, the mighty Collingwood, clash with …

AT some point soon the penny will drop for most of the federal Labor caucus. Julia Gillard will not be leading them out of the wilderness into which she has taken them.
Like a doomed traveller lost in the desert, the Prime Minister is on a constant search for the oasis that might deliver her from danger, but her flawed judgment constantly takes her off in pursuit of yet another mirage.
Thus far, Gillard’s dispirited colleagues have trudged along behind her, glumly content with her constant reassurances that things will soon turn …

WHEN I visited the famous psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung’s son, Franz, some years ago, I was very taken with the inscription over the front door.
It had been put there by Jung Sr himself and it read: “Called or not called, God is always there.”
It’s the sort of statement that his mentor, the great Sigmund Freud, might not have approved of and it marks Jung as a mystic, whereas Freud was very much a pragmatist, obsessed with sex and sceptical of the metaphysical.

Born in Switzerland on July 26, 1875, Carl Jung …

THESE days, I no longer avidly follow horse racing. But every now and then, I read about an outsider that bolts to the front at long odds and, despite the best efforts of the favourites, will not be run down.
Using this analogy, many of the inner-city electorates in Australia are becoming like electoral racetracks for bolters. The latest byelection for the state seat of Melbourne, to be held on Saturday week, is a case in point. Much to the chagrin of many Liberals, the party is not even fielding a …

WITH far too many exceptions, a new sense of reality seems at last to be dawning across the governments of Western nations that the age of entitlement may be coming to an end. British Prime Minister David Cameron took a leadership role by proposing a stunning blow to a population long accustomed to feeding at the public teat.
Cameron has decided to take on the culture of entitlement that has become an ingrained component of the welfare state.
In doing so he’s taking a political risk, but the stark reality is that …

QUEENSLAND politics has always had larger than life personalities.
From the National Party’s Joh Bjelke-Petersen to Labor’s Peter Beattie, the state has produced characters who have given its politics a national reputation for seldom being dull.
Now it is a one-time supporter of the “Joh for PM” campaign, which derailed a bid by John Howard to become prime minister, who is causing more than a ripple and embarrassing Tony Abbott and Queensland Liberal National Party Premier Campbell Newman.

The latest public outbursts of billionaire Clive Palmer have enlivened politics with a vigorous campaign …