“Austen Tayshus : Merchant of Menace” by Prof Ross Fitzgerald. An address for Melbourne’s first Jewish Writer’s Festival, the Beth Weizmann Community Centre, 306 Hawthorn Rd, South Caulfield. 4.30pm Sunday June 1, 2014
LAST YEAR` marked the 30th anniversary of the launch of Australia’s best-selling single ever, ‘Australiana’.
Performed by Sandy Gutman (aka Austen Tayshus), this subversive spoken-word piece is filled with an array of Australian puns, including ‘How much can a Koala bear?’, ‘Do you want to go Anna?’ and ‘Tryin’ to Platypus!’
Born in New York on St Patrick’s Day …
HECTOR’S DIARY, ‘Bali Advertiser’ May 28, 2014
by 8 Degrees of Latitude
Bad Burghers
A new Facebook group has appeared in cyberspace, dedicated to curbing crime in Ubud. This is an unpleasant sign of the times. Ubud may be where everyone goes to commune with the fairies, go Vegan, try to find anything that remotely resembles the purported revelations in Elizabeth Gilbert’s bodice-ripper book ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, and get in touch with their inner Pilates, but it’s also catching up with the modern world.
Some of the good burghers of Ubud, local and foreign, …
Tony Abbott has remade the $600,000 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards in his own image, with a line-up of mostly like-minded judges, including his publisher Louise Adler, conservative columnist Gerard Henderson and former Liberal MP Peter Coleman.
The names were announced by press release after Mr Abbott spoke at the Australian Book Industry Awards dinner on Friday, ending a delay that stirred concern he might drop the awards started by Kevin Rudd. Mr Abbott chose the judges from a list of suggested candidates.
At the dinner in Sydney, Mr Abbott and his Arts …
PRIME Minister Tony Abbott has announced a radical shake-up of the judging panels for the nation’s richest book prizes, the $600,000 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
The nonfiction and history panels will be chaired by conservative commentator Gerard Henderson. He will be joined by former politician and editor Peter Coleman, who is Peter Costello’s father-in-law, Ross Fitzgerald, a professor of politics and history, Ida Lichter and Ann Moyal.
The fiction and poetry panels will be chaired by publisher Louise Adler, who published Mr Abbott’s political memoir. She will be joined by Margie Bryant, …
SOON Queensland will again dominate our political agenda. In the next nine months, Queenslanders will go to the polls in an election that will be a referendum on the performance of Premier Campbell Newman’s first term in office.
Although no one seriously ÂÂexpects the Liberal National Party to lose, political interest will focus on just how many seats, out of its record majority, that the Queensland government will retain.
Newman has the advantage of presiding over a traditionally conservative state, but he would do well to study Queensland’s history as he ponders …
Busy in the Fog is a wildly funny sexual-political romp which will amaze, delight, annoy and almost certainly offend. Grafton Everest is now at his wit’s end facing life in his gluttonous middle age. Forced to deal with unexpected changes in his wife Janet, their allegedly gifted child Lee-Anne, and in his supposedly academic place of work, Grafton passes through episodes of a spiralling, phobic anxiety, Ross Fitzgerald’s Queensland has more than its share of terrorists, religious ratbags, free enterprise maniacs and right and left-wing zealots.
“Utilising a lethal wit, Fitzgerald’s …
AUSTRALIA’S political orthodoxy may be heading for a shake-up, with rising volatility in the electorate combining with a slowing economy to create difficulties for the major political parties.
The declining dominance of our so-called two-party system has been predicted many times, most notably when new parties rise to prominence.
The Australian Democrats, founded by ex-Liberal Don Chipp, once appeared likely to remain a long-term force, based on its platform of “keeping the bastards honest.
Pauline Hanson also exploited cynicism about the major parties when she founded One Nation, which for a short time …
Rather than being pilloried, federal Attorney-General George Brandis deserves praise for attempting to protect and enhance free speech and freedom of public discussion, including the expression of unpopular and unÂÂpalatable ideas.
Releasing his draft proposals, Brandis said that the current section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act had the effect of stifling public discussion: “Those three words — offend, insult, humiliate — describe what has sometimes been called hurt feelings.
Brandis is surely right in arguing that it is not the role of government to ban speech merely because it might hurt …
THE Abbott government’s economically crucial deregulation agenda, which came together in the federal parliament’s first repeal day last month, has so far been extremely successful.
As well as the Prime Minister, the key driver of the Coalition’s deregulation strategy, which will cut $1 billion in red and green tape each year, is Tony Abbott’s hardworking parliamentary secretary, Josh Frydenberg, who soon may be elevated to the ministry.
Federal Labor has been left flat-footed, realising on the one hand that deregulation is highly popular with business and the population at large, while on …
IT may be an inconvenient truth but the fact is that, in terms of its harm, alcohol is by far Australia’s most dangerous drug.
I pointed this out way back in 2003, when I was keynote speaker at the NSW Alcohol Summit.
But since I gave my blunt assessment about the dire situation with regard to alcohol in Australia, little seems to have changed. Indeed alcohol abuse is rife and alcohol-related violence is clearly on the increase, especially among the young.
One disturbing trend seems to be an exponential increase, among Australians aged …
POLITICIANS, public servants and judges have dominated Queensland’s top gongs in the century they have been dished out.
The knighthoods which are supposed to recognise the state’s great and good, have been hijacked by the political establishment, handed out to more politicians than any other group.
An analysis of the more than 200 Queensland identities who have received the top Australian and Royal honours exposes the boys club dominating the top awards , more than a fifth have been handed out as the ultimate pollies’ perk, while public servants received 16 per …
