NEXT week’s ETS debate will reveal whether Malcolm Turnbull has made the transition from gifted amateur to professional politician, argues Ross Fitzgerald.
Malcolm Turnbull believes in an emissions trading scheme. He was the Howard government minister who brought a proposal for one to cabinet and he has never wavered in his view that it’s the best way to impose a price on carbon. But governments and oppositions have different roles. The government has to run the country. The opposition has to hold the government to account. It normally does so by …

THERE has to be a political afterlife that is acceptable to the people of Australia.
Given our national antipathy toward ex-ministers taking corporate jobs while drawing a pension, we must find a better way to put their experience to good use, says Ross Fitzgerald.
For years I have been observing the public debate over what politicians should do after they leave or are defeated in parliamentary politics, and I know there is no perfect answer. Some ex-pollies stay in the political game, others set out to make money as consultants and corporate …

IN Brisbane’s southern suburbs, among decidedly Anglo-Australian suburb names,  such as Loganholme and Meadowbrook, the name Tanah Merah stands out.
Few of its residents know that their suburb’s name means “red earth in Bahasa Indonesia, the national language of our most populous neighbour, and was named after a notorious prison camp in Dutch West New Guinea.
Given our current, closer, relationship with the Republic of Indonesia, it is timely to reflect on the contribution to Australian and Indonesian history made by the 500 internees and their families from Tanah Merah who were …

DON’T be surprised if the Bradfield and Higgins by-elections on December 5 throw up some unexpected outcomes.
There have already been a few shock moves. Labor’s failure to nominate a candidate for either electorate was just too smart for words. It smacked of the same poor judgment that inspired it to hand a preference deal and the last Senate seat in Victoria to Steve Fielding in 2007.
The newly formed Australian Sex Party has nominated a 26-year-old lesbian pole dancer and human rights lawyer, Zahra Stardust, for Bradfield. In Higgins it has …

IN our society, significant pressure is often applied to those who need to remain abstinent from alcohol and other drugs to stay alive.
This also applies in our prisons, where 80 per cent of inmates have significant problems with alcohol and other drugs.
Yet even within our prison population there is strong pressure from psychologists and other professionals to advocate so-called harm minimisation as opposed to the goal of total abstinence.
In common and often professional usage, the notion of harm minimisation conflates two very different ideas. Only one of these do I …

THE great mystery of Australian politics is why Kevin Rudd’s approval rating remains so high.
It seems that the only people who don’t like him are those who actually know him: journalists like Annabel Crabb, for example, who has just called him a ‘faux-moralist fraud’ and colleagues like Mark Latham (no slouch at nastiness himself) who once called him a ‘real piece of work’. For everyone who’s never had to deal with the Prime Minister, though, it seems that he’s the slightly nerdy, deeply Christian magician who’s saved Australia from the …

ANNA Bligh recently returned from her first overseas trip since being elected Queensland Premier in her own right on March 21.  She visited India, the Middle East and Russia.
The worst world economic crisis since the Depression has led to the loss of Queensland’s AAA credit rating, rising unemployment and the government’s unpopular decision to sell off public assets such as ports, rail and timber.
Yet Bligh did not visit Queensland’s main trading partners: Japan, South Korea and China. It was the loss of coal royalties that reduced government revenue and in …

“NEVER use the R-word,” insists a character in Sydney-based writer Michael Wilding’s new novel Superfluous Men, published by Arcadia in Melbourne.
“No point in letting people think we’re finished. Once they think you’re finished you’re out of the game.”
The R-word is retirement; the game is life, what’s left of it. Courtesy of Wayne Swan, retirement has been pushed back a couple of years to 67 for most people. But moving the goalposts does not alter the demographics. The baby boomers are entering retirement. Early retirement, maybe. But still retirement. And they …

Imagine that, when John Howard was proposing a goods and services tax, all the media focus had been on Kim Beazley and Labor’s mixed views on the merits and politics of a GST.
It’s almost inconceivable that the opposition has managed to make itself the issue when it’s actually the government that is proposing a new carbon tax to cascade through the entire economy. But that’s what Malcolm Turnbull has achieved.
Turnbull is a highly intelligent, articulate man who has succeeded in a series of highly competitive fields. It’s a credit to …

Here’s a thought. Peter Costello resigns his seat of Higgins and links up with his old National Party buddy, John Anderson.
Then with the backing of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) and Pete’s brother, the Rev Tim, they form the Queen Mary of religious politics, the Australian Christian Party. Putting aside the obvious battle over the name with the Revd Fred Nile, this scenario may not be so far-fetched as it seems.
Everyone knows we’re living in the ‘end times’ , well, the end times for religion, anyway. Science is quietly leading …

ALTHOUGH Tony Abbott, a senior federal Liberal MP, says there are grounds for optimism about Aboriginal policy (Inquirer, September 5), it’s far too early to declare victory.
Still, there have been advances. Take Cape York, for example. Thanks to Noel Pearson, there are now at least some controls on alcohol in four indigenous communities. Also, the Queensland government is finally providing appropriate police numbers in Aboriginal communities and, thanks to a mix of carrot and stick, at least in Cape York more children are going to school.
But there’s still an enormous …