IT may only be a part-time position but appointing former Queensland premier Peter Beattie to the newly created position of resource sector supplier envoy is a smart move by the federal government.
Beattie has a strong history in resources and value adding. He changed Queensland’s energy policy in 2000 by requiring 13 per cent of Queensland’s generated energy to come from gas leading to the state’s billion-dollar coal-seam gas industry. Another 2 per cent of generation had to come from renewables. It was a …

AUSTRALIA has long been considered a safe and attractive place to do business. We have a transparent rule of law, strong public institutions and democratically elected governments.

Add to this a record of stable and generally sound policy-making, and we have enjoyed an environment where businesses have a high degree of certainty that their investments will not be subject to inconsistent and bad government decision-making.
Put simply, government, or sovereign, risk in Australia has generally been low.
Unfortunately, this is no longer the case.
Under …

THE ghost of “Real Julia” has returned to haunt the Prime Minister, who continues to struggle with her credibility.
If we cast our minds back to last year’s election campaign, the response to the “Real Julia” announcement was that the public wondered whether they had only seen a “Fake Julia” up to that time.
This is the crux of Julia Gillard’s struggle for authority.
This week, the Australian Financial Review claimed, as it now seems wrongly, that when she was deputy prime minister Gillard …

SYDNEY Lord Mayor Clover Moore has offered a lesson to Australia’s other cities. Her campaign against traffic congestion, climate change and alcohol-fuelled violence is bold and commendable. She might not be popular with everyone, especially those with vested interests such as the big liquor industries, but her aim is true: to create a better-functioning, safer global city that is more attractive to residents, workers, visitors and tourists.
Moore has been rounded on by some media and by the new NSW Government for her outspokenness and for Sydney City Council’s recent decision …

THE next federal election may be two years away but Julia Gillard is facing a political cancer that will see either the end of her prime ministership or the end of the federal Labor government.
Political history shows us that when a government is in trouble it needs to take decisive action or its days are numbered.
Too often political parties in trouble develop an inertia and inability to deal with its problems, which ensures its exit from the government benches, usually for more than one term. Where there are internal divisions …

A FORTNIGHT ago, when Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey stood side by side with ex- Wallaby Geoff Didier at a Canberra steel factory, it was only natural that their conversation turned quickly to their love of rugby. All three have a love of the game.
Two of them, Abbott and Hockey, could only dream of playing in the green and gold. But it didn’t stop them both trying. There’s a revealing tale about one of the pair’s first meetings. Abbott as coach of the Sydney University rugby team; Hockey as a …

THE new Australian Party could soon set a Katter among the pigeons. Party founder, the Queensland independent federal MP for Kennedy, Bob Katter Jr, is aiming to influence the cross benches in some states but he’s also after a slice of the traditional conservative vote and a sliver of the Greens vote as well.
While he’s offering voters a mix of rural socialism, nationalism and protectionist economic policy, he’s also wrong-footed not just the National Party but also the Liberal Party by calling for more personal freedom and civil liberties. Bob …

AT the February 26 Irish general election this year, after controversial Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams resigned from both the Westminster and Stormont parliaments to enter politics south of the border, he topped the poll in the constituency of Louth, to secure a seat in the Irish Dail, the lower house of the country’s national parliament.
As befits a political party that fervently believes in a united Ireland, Adams’s presidency of Sinn Fein covers both the Irish republic and Northern Ireland, which Adams always refers to as “the north of Ireland”.
Sinn …

WITH the upcoming anniversary of Labor’s removal of Kevin Rudd from the office of prime minister, his successor Julia Gillard will be nervously keeping watch on her dangerously low approval ratings.
If she cannot turn public opinion, it can only be a matter of time before her caucus colleagues remove her from the top job.
Gillard’s ability to recover from her slide in the polls will depend on how well entrenched public opinion is of her and her leadership style.
If the public decides it has seen enough of this Prime Minister to …

ECENT draconian, anti-democratic provisions, especially in NSW, are threatening the survival of small parties such as the Australian Sex Party and the eccentrically named Outdoor Recreation Party.
As for aspiring political minnows, well, it’s getting tougher to register as official political parties in the populous state.
In last year’s federal election, 21 political parties nominated candidates in NSW for the Senate. In this year’s state election, only 14 political parties nominated candidates for the Legislative Council, its state equivalent.
Based on the potential for success, these numbers should have been reversed. The first …

DESMOND Ball’s important account of a crucial conversation with historian Manning Clark provides significant new information about Clark’s close friend Ian Milner.
It makes it clear that Clark withheld the inconvenient truth that he knew about Milner’s close connections with the Communist Party from at least as far back as 1944.
Milner was a significant player in communist espionage. Yet right until their deaths in 1991, and including in the historian’s memoir The Quest for Grace, Clark seems to have chosen to put his friendship with Milner ahead of telling the truth. …