Voting should be a meaningful activity. Like a good crossword or a Meyers-Briggs test, it should challenge people to engage in a quick but stimulating mental process and then give them a result that clearly registers their input.
It doesn’t necessarily matter if their party or candidate doesn’t win. What matters is that their vote is actually counted. And when the figures go up in the tally room on a Saturday night, they can see that of the total number of votes that a local candidate received, theirs was one …

JUST more than three months ago Anna Bligh led the Labor Party in Queensland to a comfortable victory, winning 51 of the one-house parliament’s 89 seats.
It was far from a landslide victory but it was a relatively good performance nevertheless, especially bearing in mind she was campaigning for Labor’s fifth term. In winning that election, Bligh made history in becoming the first elected female Premier in Australia and she temporarily silenced those critics who had thought the Liberal National Party could win the election.
There was much ALP rejoicing at the …

Peter Costello’s imminent retirement from federal parliament changed the political dynamic inside the Coalition. It seemed to make Malcolm Turnbull’s position more secure.
Because he will no longer have to suffer the inevitable comparisons with Costello, or look over his shoulder every time some MP is annoyed, it also seemed to improve Turnbull’s chances of becoming prime minister.
Yet even before his Utegate allegations turned round to bite him, Turnbull was still well under even money to win next year’s federal election. And there’s not much likelihood of him hanging …

Censorship in Australia did a reverse pike with double twist last month as yet another coalition of the feminist left and the religious right made its move.
‘Kids Free 2 B Kids’, a group of grammatically challenged McMoralists from Melbourne, managed to get the former superannuation executive and Pentecostal senator Steve Fielding to take up the cudgel for them.
The issue was whether and to what extent raunchy, trailer park and lads’ magazines should be sold from petrol stations and milk bars in our Great Southland (or Terra Australis, if you prefer).
In …

VOTERS are discovering another side to Kevin Rudd that those who followed his career in Queensland were already aware of: the Prime Minister has a nasty streak.
Earlier this month a Galaxy Research poll for News Limited metropolitan newspapers found that 43 per cent of voters thought Rudd was someone who could turn nasty if he didn’t get his own way.
Unlike John Howard, who stayed true to the suburban solicitor he started out as, Rudd’s whole life is an artifice. With his blond hair, round face, round glasses and wholesome values, …

THE rugby league sex scandal has gripped the nation by its genitals, and there’s no indication that it’s about to let go soon.
It’s a fairly crude assessment, but then it’s a fairly crude issue that the community is being asked to deal with and digest. Even Kevin Rudd felt compelled to wade in on the matter by calling on all sporting clubs to give women more respect and giving his tacit agreement to the Nine Network’s sacking of Matthew Johns.
At the same time there are many …

The opposition’s failure to strike has only enhanced the government’s economic standing, says Ross Fitzgerald
As the dust settles from the annual post-Budget brawl, a lot of Liberals will be scratching their heads and wondering just how Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey managed to make such a hash of it.
In short, the global recession provided Mr Turnbull and Mr Hockey with the softest free kick in Australian political history.
Consider the conditions in which this budget was framed. The recession has wiped $210 billion from the budget bottom line, …

IN the 1940s, a controversial and idealistic scholar was employed to teach history at the Canberra University College (the forerunner of the Australian National University). No narrow pedant, his interests ranged from J.S. Bach to the latest political developments. Because he questioned conventional ideas, he was accused of being a subversive and attracted the attention of the security service.
Sound familiar? This mini-biography does indeed fit Manning Clark to a T. It covers events that are familiar to the reading public at large, thanks to the sensational 1996 allegations concerning Clark …

One Sydney novelist is proposing a subscription model to alleviate our perpetual publishing crisis, says Ross Fitzgerald
They say there’s a publishing crisis in Australia, but that’s nothing new. Publishing has always been in crisis in Australia because, for a start, the population has never been large enough to fully support a local industry: not for quality literary titles, anyway. The book trade has always been dominated by imports, initially from British companies, then American, now joined by German- and French-based multinationals.
Writers in Australia are often a desperate bunch, struggling for …

AFTER the budget, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would do well to consider a reshuffle of his ministry, to drop the deadwood and give an opportunity to some who have performed well in junior roles.
While the pressure has been off Wayne Swan in recent months as the Opposition has been busy distracting itself, no Treasurer since the Depression has had to present a budget like the one that’s coming.
Swan’s task is to make it credible that a $70 billion-plus turnaround in 12months to the budget bottom line is …

RELIGION may figure strongly at the next federal election. The electorate has had enough of self-opinionated bishops and crazy imams, and many citizens are fed up with the way the main parties bow and scrape to religious groups.

George Pell’s recent pronouncement, which supported the Pope’s claim that condoms do nothing to stop HIV transmission, puts him in the same league as flat-earthers and creationists. Educated middle-class voters are tired of this anti-intellectual stance from people who are supposed to inhabit the high moral ground. Pell even termed the AIDS epidemic …