by ROSS FITZGERALD
With Covid jabs now beginning to roll out, my sense is that we’ll soon declare victory over the pandemic and conclude that “Australia had a good war”. At one level, there’s no doubt that we’ve done well. If minimising Covid deaths is the yardstick, our performance has been “world-class”, “gold standard” even. Still, I’m far from sure that our response has justified the self-congratulation now oozing from state and federal first ministers’ every pore.
For one thing, there’s a massive economic downside to the health upside. Sectors like higher …

By ROSS FITZGERALD
In 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, there were almost 22 million international arrivals into Australia. That’s Australians returning from overseas trips and foreigners coming to this country. Twenty-two million international arrivals in a country of 25 and a half million people shows how much we take global travel for granted – or used to, before the pandemic, and rules designed to prevent COVID from coming to Australia made it all-but-impossible. 
From March last year, international arrivals that had been averaging nearly two million a month have …

by ROSS FITZGERALD

Joe Biden’s administration is likely to be more popular around the world than the Trump administration, but it’s far from clear that it will be more effective.

If, as seems probable from the incoming president’s appointments (such as former secretary of state John Kerry), Biden turns out to be Obama lite, there’s likely to be plenty of fine words but not much strong action.
As vice-president, Biden spent several days in Australia in July 2016, and gave an address on the Australia-US relationship at Sydney’s Paddington Town Hall. It …

 
Maybe a Dip. Wellness from The Gunnedah Institute does not qualify a canine like Jackie to become an art critic.  Except for the fact that almost everyone is an art critic these days.  And like most critics Jackie doesn’t know much about  art but she knows what she likes – as the saying goes (or went).
And so it came to pass that Jackie has decided to recommend each year that one portrait from those that made the final cut is currently on display at the Art Gallery of NSW and …

ROSS FITZGERALD
 

I’m at risk, but I don’t want lockdowns

It’s hard to credit in a democracy like Australia, but five and a half million Melburnians are set to continue under virtual house arrest almost indefinitely. On Sunday, Premier Dan Andrews‘ roadmap to reopening turned out to be a plan for even more lockdowns. Unless cases in Victoria drop to below current New South Wales levels, the curfew will continue beyond October 26; and restaurants won’t be open for indoor service until after November 23, and then only if there are no …

by ROSS FITZGERALD

Cigarettes in Australia have never been subjected to prohibition. Advances in manufacturing, marketing and advertising of cigarettes, starting over a century ago, saw cigarette smoking steadily increase for half a century. Soon after World War II, a majority of Australian men smoked, although smoking rates among women never reached such high levels.

After World War II, shocking research about the dangers of smoking began to appear. First a trickle of research, then a flood. Now we know that up to two of every three long-term smokers will die from …

It’s time to get a sense of proportion about the virus
ROSS FITZGERALD
One of Scott Morrison’s key innovations, as border protection minister, was to stop the practice of making announcements every time an illegal migrant boat arrived. “I’m not in the business of providing shipping news for people smugglers” he used to say. It certainly helped that government policies, most notably boat turn-backs, were actually defusing the crisis. But by refusing to front the media on a near-daily basis, he avoided elevating the issue and giving a platform to doom-mongers.
It’s hard not …

The so-called National Cabinet
This is no way to produce sensible policy
ROSS FITZGERALD
Last month, Australia’s top bureaucrat congratulated himself on the creation of the so-called National Cabinet, saying that this had made Australia’s response to the pandemic “one of the best, if not the best, in the world in terms of the federations”. Earlier, the Prime Minister had likewise patted himself on the back for making a monthly National Cabinet meeting with the premiers and chief ministers a permanent feature of Australian governance. These National Cabinet meetings would be, Scott Morrison …

by Ross Fitzgerald
Founded in London in January 1884, with the aim of establishing a socialist society by peaceful means, the Fabian Society in Britain speedily evolved into the first modern-style think tank. It did much to craft the policies advocated by the British Labour Party, which was founded in London in February 1900.
The Fabian Society’s early success had its echoes in Australia.  Fabian societies sprang into life in several of our capital cities after the Labor Party first emerged as a force to be reckoned with at the state and federal level. …

by ROSS FITZGERALD and STEPHEN HOLT
Serious interest in the voting patterns of Eden-Monaro long predates next Saturday’s by-election. It goes back to the mid-1950s when the study of voting outcomes was starting to take off as a field of research in Australia.

In 1954 Professor Leicester Webb from the Australian National University in Canberra published a study of the failed 1951 referendum campaign to legalise the banning of the Communist Party. In the same year Webb’s colleague Joan Rydon together with Henry Mayer from Sydney University published a study of the …

From The Australian newspaper online, June 10, 2020. 
The great characters of the AA movement
by ROSS FITZGERALD
Since it began, Alcoholics Anonymous has saved the lives of millions of people across the globe. That’s something worth celebrating today (June 10), which is Founders Day on the AA calendar. 
The inspirational story of AA began in 1935 when a newlysober New York stockbroker, Bill Wilson visited Akron, Ohio on a business trip. Afraid he might drink again, he decided to talk with another alcoholic.  The person he found wasa seemingly hopeless alcoholic  physician, Bob Smith. Afterlistening to Bill tell the story of his alcoholism he was so …