He is as tough a man as ever played the modern game; but skilful, too. He has hurt opponents on and off the field. He played 312 AFL games, all with the Crows, and won a Brownlow medal. He is an eight-time all-Australian (twice named captain) and he captained Adelaide. One year he cried from the sidelines as his teammates won a grand final and the next he returned to hold the premiership cup. When the AFL allows cloning, the Adelaide Football Club’s first draft pick will be Mark Ricciuto’s …
Show us some backbone, PM, or lose marginal seats
Malcolm Turnbull has had a scrappy few months. While some boosters in the media still are willing him to succeed, the lustre is wearing off and the disappointment certainly is starting to show.
The basic problem is that Turnbull had a plan to become Prime Minister but no plan for running a government.
He’s talked a lot about “agility and “due process, but in almost six months his government has done nothing of substance. Turnbull may be Prime Minister but, to all intents and …
The changes to Senate voting proposed by Malcolm Turnbull and backed by the Greens and Nick Xenophon, represent unprecedented government interference in the Australian democratic system.
For all the talk about voters having to mark six boxes above the line on the ballot paper, the new laws will still allow a mark in one box above the line to stand as a legitimate vote. So let’s not kid ourselves that this is somehow a voting system that is in any way inclusive of small parties.
For Turnbull, this legislation is an admission …
The Charles Family’s War
By Alan Fewster
Big Sky Publishing, 228pp, $29.99
When former journalist and diplomat Alan Fewster found a treasure trove of letters after the death of one of his uncles, he knew he had a book on his hands. Mind you, this intriguing and multi-layered tale of Australian twin brothers during World War II has had a long gestation.
It was in 1987, following the death of his uncle Edwin “Ted Charles, that the author came across a cardboard box containing the hundreds of letters that form the basis of this …
As well as being Valentine’s Day and the showing in Sydney of Tropfest, the world’s biggest short-film festival, Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the adoption of decimal currency in Australia.
But less famously, February 14 is the centenary of one of the most disgraceful events in Australian military history.
During World War I, there was a strong push by the anti-liquor movement and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union to limit alcohol consumption in Australia. This was because male drunkenness was seen to be the root cause of many social problems, including …
Telstra last night was dealing with a new crisis with some of its broadband users unable to access hundreds of websites most of yesterday. Businesses were among those hit, in some cases unable to access mail and with their hosted websites inaccessible to customers.
Not all websites were affected. But users were complaining that websites hosted by Bluehost, HostGator and Hostmonster would not load in the browsers of some Telstra broadband users.
The outage appeared to have gone on all day yesterday in what was a separate incident to Tuesday’s massive mobile …
It’s a sad fact that most of the alcohol in Australia is drunk by a small percentage of problem drinkers.
According to a recent report of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, a fifth of all Australian drinkers consume three-quarters of the grog. The heaviest-drinking 5 five per cent , about 1 million Australians , consume more than eight standard drinks of alcohol every day, and the proportion of alcohol being consumed by heavy drinkers is increasing.
The alcohol industry has known for a long time that consumption is very uneven …
Since his corporate-style takeover of the Liberal Party in September, Malcolm Turnbull has had a charmed run.
He’s doing well in the polls. Progressives in the media see him as one of their own and those on the Right regard him as better than the Labor alternative. Hence, up to now, there’s been little scrutiny of what his government says or does.
All the pundits agree that Turnbull’s rise has lifted the government’s fortunes ahead of the next federal election and it’s tempting to see this as proof that the Coalition is …
There were only six heroin overdose deaths in Australia in 1964. But by 1997, heroin overdose deaths in Australia had climbed to 1116. Just imagine the number of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters who had suddenly lost a young loved one.
Australia’s first supervised injecting facility began operating in Sydney’s Kings Cross in 2001 in response to the epidemic of heroin overdose deaths in the 1990s.
One in 10 of all heroin overdose deaths in Australia occurred within a couple of kilometres of Kings Cross. So reducing the number of heroin …
Much has been said and written recently about Tony Abbott’s ÂÂalleged failures of leadership as prime minister. Yes, there were mistakes but the commentariat’s obsession with them obscures a ÂÂrecord of solid achievement.
In securing our borders, finalising free trade agreements with our major economic partners and ÂÂrepealing harmful taxes, he achieved what many thought was impossible.
He was mocked for promising to “shirt-front Vladimir Putin, but no one else had really taken on the Russian despot — and, short of going to war, a robust dressing down is the strongest response …
Alcohol industry reliant on problem drinkers, say critics.
“PM”, ABC Radio National and ABC Local Radio, 20 January, 2016
TIM PALMER: The message to drink responsibly tags nearly every alcohol commercial. But research published today suggests that’s a fairly pointless message.
It shows that the majority of drinkers, as the liquor industry likes to point out, already do drink responsibly.
But that 20 per cent of Australian drinkers don’t, and they seem inured to the message – they consume three-quarters of all alcohol bought in Australia and that’s going up.
The heaviest drinkers of …
