IN LATE 1959, as a precocious 15-year-old student at Melbourne Boys High School, I wrote to Fidel Castro, Prime Minister of Cuba, offering myself as an economics adviser. One afternoon, shortly after my Collingwood football-playing father, Bill Fitzgerald, had returned from work as a fitter and turner at the State Electricity Commission in Richmond, an officer from the Victorian Special Branch, which had intercepted my letter, knocked on the door. My father, who I later realised was a DLP (Democratic Labor Party) supporter, was mortified. Angrily, he accused me of …

Shine light on wheels of power

…

In Queensland, the populist Peter Beattie first led Labor to power in 1998. Premier Beattie then won three more landslide victories in 2001, 2004 and 2006, and now the state ALP government led by Anna Bligh has a huge majority in Queensland’s one-house Parliament.
Labor has 58 of the 89 seats. It actually won 59 seats at the last state election, but Ronan Lee, the member for Indooroopilly, defected to the Greens last year.
The 2008 redistribution of Queensland electoral boundaries significantly favoured Labor, which now has probably 63 or 64 notional …

Ross Fitzgerald on the efforts to save a crumbling rural picture palace.

Nestled in the main street of Junee in rural New South Wales, the Athenium picture theatre has seen better days. Once the lifeblood of the community and a hub for theatre, films and the latest newsreels, the cinema is now boarded up and in disrepair. While it crumbles, the Heritage Council of NSW and Junee Shire Council try to work out what to do with this faded jewel.
Listed on the NSW State Heritage Register in 2003, the theatre is …

ON Thursday, Karambir Singh Kang, the general manager of Mumbai’s signature Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, will return to work.
This will take considerable stoicism and fortitude, as during the 90-hour terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which began in the afternoon of November26, Kang’s wife and two sons were killed. These three tragic deaths were among the 178 fatalities in Mumbai that included Indian residents and visitors from the US, Britain, Australia and other countries.
Along with India’s tourism authorities, Kang faces a huge task in turning around the vast drop …

In The Best Australian Essays 2008, David Marr presents 31 offerings, including a piece by himself — supposedly because ‘the publishers insisted’ and he ‘didn’t fight’!
Not unsurprisingly the result is a curate’s egg, although it does seem clear that a disproportionate number of essays hail from the Monthly, which like this book is published by Morry Schwartz’s Melbourne-based Black Inc. This means that much of this volume is intellectually inbred.
But enough carping, let’s deal with some of the positives.
Two of the most promising pieces in the collection are ‘To Hell …

IF 29 countries, including France and Germany, can completely or partially ban the advertising of booze and in the process reduce alcohol consumption, why is Australia dragging the chain?

This is something our health ministers should urgently consider.

According to a recent commonwealth report, the annual cost to Australia of alcohol abuse in terms of policing and health care is $15 billion.
In NSW, the chief health officer estimates alcohol causes 1220 deaths and 47,000 hospitalisations a year.
Last week, NSW Health Minister John Della Bosca called for a public debate …

DOOMSAYERS who think the current global economic crisis spells the end of capitalism as we know it should think again.
For a start, instead of winding back after the failure of the globalising free marketeers, the stated aim of the G20 group of countries, enthusiastically endorsed by Kevin Rudd, is to extend the unregulated free market worldwide. In a similar manner, and despite the opposition of China, Rudd is pushing for all 21 of the Apec member countries to universally embrace ‘free trade’.
Rudd and other world leaders should look before …

QUEENSLAND Premier Anna Bligh’s spectacular backdowns on recycled water and on the controversial Traveston dam project will not save her at the next state election. Not unless she shelves her plan to add fluoride to the drinking water.

Those who think the introduction of fluoride is a minor issue should think again. It was, after all, a highway through koala habitat in southeast Queensland that ended the government of Wayne Goss.
Fluoride will be added to Queensland drinking water just before the new year break. The …

Ross Fitzgerald hails Anderson Dawson, political trailblazer and leader of the world’s first Labor government
This week is Kevin Rudd’s Labor government’s first birthday. Whether it will form part of Australia’s collective political memory is as yet unknown.
Certainly Barack Obama’s historic American presidential victory means that, throughout the world, Tuesday 4 November 2008 will be forever etched in the global consciousness.
But there is another historic date which deserves to be remembered, and that is 1 December 1899, which heralded the world’s first Labor government. Believe it or not, this occurred in …

IN a democracy, losing an election often makes the losing side feel like dropping its bundle, which of course it shouldn’t.
Being in Opposition comes with its own set of expectations and responsibilities. A strong Opposition is a vital counterpoint to any government and if it isn’t constantly probing, even attacking, it can allow a government to become weak, inefficient and out of touch. Consider the case of NSW. Would Labor still be in power there if the conservative coalition had spent more time in the past decade fighting it, rather …