Tony Abbott knows he is landing the blows
OVER the past few months, Labor’s standard attack on Tony Abbott has been that he’s “too negative”. They’ve even published a pamphlet about the Opposition Leader: The Little Book of Dr No.

Apart from breaking the first rule of politics – don’t advertise the other side – this just sets up Abbott to show another facet of his versatile political personality.
From the word go, Abbott has always said that he had two jobs: first, to discredit a bad government and, second, to establish the …

IN the new year, Julia Gillard and the poor standing of federal Labor will not be responsible for the defeat of Anna Bligh’s Labor government in Queensland.
The blunt reality is that Bligh’s government is one of the worst in Queensland history. Neither the Premier nor her government is up to the job. Its defeat will be primarily because of its incompetence. It is little wonder that eight key members of the Bligh team, including six former ministers, are retiring at the state election. They have simply given up on Bligh …

FEW events in politics work out precisely as expected. Some issues burn intensely, like a flare that lights up the sky but then fades quickly from view, with little to no ongoing impact on the political process.
The Coalition’s attempts to link then opposition leader Kevin Rudd to disgraced former Western Australia premier Brian Burke is an example of what could have been an all-consuming scandal that went nowhere.
The more dangerous issues usually start off slowly, often taking months or years to reach the perilous proportions of a political scandal.
Labor backbencher …

IN a time of doom and gloom in the publishing world it’s uplifting to read about an era when publishing was exciting and the future was pregnant with possibilities.
Yet even then, books needed smart people willing to take a punt on talent.
In ‘Wild & Woolley: A Publishing Memoir’, the Sydney-based Michael Wilding recalls how he and Pat Woolley set up a small press in the 1970s to do just that. Wilding and Woolley knew that there was a lot of good writing around that wasn’t getting out. So get it …

ALCOHOLICS Anonymous is the most successful self-help group in the world and by far the most successful agency in helping alcoholic men and women stop drinking, and stay stopped.
Yet its critics (and there are many) argue that there is no reliable empirical evidence to support the efficacy of AA and its 12-step program. This is not true.
While it is the case that AA itself keeps no records and that its only membership requirement is a desire to stop drinking, recent American studies show how and why regular attendance at AA …

DURING the last federal election a friend was having her hair cut at a local hairdressing salon. Flipping idly through a magazine, she came across a photograph of Julia Gillard. The young hairdresser (but of voting age) peered over her shoulder and asked sweetly Who is that? It may come as a surprise to our politicians, but many Australians would struggle to name the senior members of cabinet, some would even struggle, unless prompted, to name the Prime Minister or the Opposition Leader.
Yet opinion polls indicate that many people appear …

THE first female premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh, and the first female prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, share one thing in common; they are both politically doomed. The only difference is that Bligh will almost certainly be defeated at a Queensland election in March, while Gillard will be replaced before the next federal election.
For Bligh, the timing of Gillard’s replacement is crucial. While Gillard remains Prime Minister she is dragging down Labor’s state vote in Queensland by 5 to 7 per cent. Yet while Labor is travelling badly under …

HAVING just been on the end of a less than ecstatic review of our political-sexual satire Fools’ Paradise, a friend reminded my co-author, Trevor Jordan, and myself of a quote attributed to Oscar Wilde.
The great playwright and poet allegedly opined that: “The artist’s opinion of the critic is rather like that of a telegraph pole’s opinion of a dog.”
Whether Wilde said this or not, it got me thinking about how best, as a writer, to deal with criticism. As those who know me know, my rule of thumb, and my …

Click here to read my Alumni story in The Fulbrighter Australia, October 2011

ONE of the interesting side- effects of the Federal Parliament’s obsession with immigration and taxation issues this year has been that serious discussion of social policy has been sadly neglected. Especially around drugs. It’s been about 40 years since marijuana, LSD and heroin made their way into Australian society and about 30 years for cocaine and ecstasy. Methamphetamine has been with us for a little more than 15 years and in the past couple of years we’ve started to see the advent of synthetic analogue drugs such as Kronic.
Three inescapable …

WHEN Labor finally got its carbon tax through the lower house, the government rightly was quite relieved. But astute political watchers were taken aback, indeed amazed, at the level of self-congratulation and jubilation that followed.
It’s one thing to mark the passing of key legislation. Both political parties have done that: take as examples Mabo, Wik, the sale of Telstra and the GST. But the scenes witnessed when the carbon tax was narrowly passed through this federal parliament may prove quite damaging for Labor in time.
Seeing those images on the television …