ABC television’s satire The Hollowmen introduced Australians to a type of professional unfamiliar to many citizens: the federal government policymaker.
In reality, unless reasoning is clear and ideology is jettisoned, policy making can have unintended deleterious consequences.
Take, for example, the Coalition’s Work Choices and the Rudd Government’s tax hike on ready-to-drink alcopops.
While it may be too early to definitively conclude whether the increased tax on premixed alcopops has reduced binge drinking, especially among young women and men, early evidence suggests this policy hasn’t achieved its intended goal and has possibly led …

IN the space of a month, former Howard government minister Mal Brough has gone from being touted as a possible conservative saviour in his home state of Queensland to being a potential conservative wrecker.
A little over a month ago, Brough stormed back into public life when he romped home in a ballot for the presidency of the Queensland Liberal Party. But that’s where his triumph ended. Brough had made a mark for himself as the straight-talking, military trained politician who led the politically popular intervention into the Northern Territory’s indigenous …

IN 1957 the Queensland Labor premier Vince Gair, who had comfortably won two state elections, found himself at war with his own party over the issue of union influence. So they sold him out.
As a direct consequence of the rift – and despite Labor’s previous strong performances – the conservatives soon took power and there they remained for 32 years.
The stoush also precipitated the rise and rise of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and all it meant for the Sunshine State and Labor’s electoral future.
It’s with a chilling sense of deja vu that …

Tomorrow at Sydney’s historic Mint Building in Macquarie Street, the Heritage Council of NSW and the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (NSW Chapter) launches a major publication, ‘New Uses for Heritage Places’, which showcases seriously sustainable uses for Australia’s heritage buildings.
But you won’t find the federal government taking a similarly forward-looking approach to heritage matters. The Australian government continues to significantly under-fund heritage protection, especially our Aboriginal and historic sites.
There is no excuse for this inattention, particularly as Australia is now at the cutting edge of heritage conservation. The ideas …

A key plank in the Australian Football League’s plan to expand the national competition is to establish permanently a second Aussie Rules team in the Harbour City. Not that Sydney’s proposed second AFL team will be housed anywhere near the Harbour foreshore; their headquarters will be in western suburbs and most likely based at Blacktown.
Perhaps surprisingly, the long-time chairman of the Sydney Swans, Richard Colless, said to me yesterday that he is “enthusiastic about any move to grow the game in New South Wales and the ACT. However Colless makes …

TEN years ago today, the Queensland Nationals lost their last premier, Rob Borbidge.
Having defeated Wayne Goss, Borbidge seemed likely to return Queensland to long-term conservative rule. Yet just over two years later, his government fell to Labor’s new Opposition leader, Peter Beattie, for years left out in the cold by Goss.
Borbidge lost, not just because of a lacklustre governmental performance, an adverse reaction to a secret Nationals deal with the Queensland Police Union, and indecision over how to deal with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, but more importantly it was …

(Friday May 30, 2008) Many thanks for that kind introduction Michael. In fact, I am just finishing book number 30 , a history of alcohol in Australia, entitled A Nation Under the Influence.
Just before I hopped on the plane, my wife Lyndal reminded me of a scathing review of my work written by one of mine many enemies in Queensland. This devastating attack concluded, “Ross Fitzgerald is one of Australia’s most prolific, yet least read, authors.”
The sad fact is that, in many ways, …

REFORMIST and modernising are not words usually associated with the Queensland Nationals, an organisation often still associated with the excesses of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era, writes Ross Fitzgerald.
Yet in guiding the push to merge the state Nationals and the Liberal Party, Queensland Nationals leader Lawrence Springborg is proving to be a reformer and moderniser of non-Labor politics at a state and, possibly, a national level.
Unlike the rest of Australia, in Queensland the Nationals remain the dominant partner in the Coalition by a ratio of two to one, with the Liberals …

OUR existing system of university governance was designed to support academic freedom and excellence, but as universities have corporatised themselves, vice-chancellors are no longer primarily guardians of academic standards but rather see themselves as chief executives. Yet, with a number of conspicuous exceptions, too often our VCs seem to behave as naive and gullible amateurs.
Universities Australia (the “industry” peak body) appears content with the status quo under which chief executive authority rests with the vice-chancellor (increasingly also called the president), who is supposedly accountable to a council, senate or board …

FOR years I have been arguing that the only hope the conservatives have of defeating Labor in Queensland is a single united party.
I have also argued that the recently re-elected National Party leader Lawrence Springborg, who at age 21 was the youngest person to take a seat in Queensland Parliament, is far and away the most talented of the state’s conservative MPs.
First elected to the one-house Queensland Parliament in 1989, the member for Southern Downs was Queensland’s youngest cabinet minister when in 1998, aged 29, he became minister for natural …

A HARD-HITTING American study from the Rand Corporation – hardly a soft and fuzzy organisation – found that every dollar spent on treating drug and alcohol addiction saved seven dollars in law enforcement. But this research has had little impact on policy directions in any country, let alone the US. Treatment services remain under-funded while police and corrective services still get the big dollars. This does little more than service the status quo.
Meanwhile more recent research, the internationally acclaimed Australian Treatment Outcomes Study, which was completed in the past three …