Ross Fitzgerald’s novel “Pushed from the Wings is a riotously funny black comedy set in Queensland, Australia. His teetotal hypochondriac hero, Grafton Everest, is destined to become an Australian legend: an Antipodean early middle-age mix of Walter Mitty, Billy Liar and Sandy Stone. An anti-hero of outrageous proportion. “Pushed from the Wings is now an eBook.

IF the High Court sends West Australians back to the polls in the new year, we will see the formation of some very odd political alliances among the smaller parties as they wheel and deal for preferences. The recent WA Senate election certainly showed minor parties could win one and possibly two seats if they had the right preference deal in place.
In the past, minor parties and independents have been elected to the Senate via clever or lucky preference arrangements. The habit of Labor and the Coalition of preferencing religious …

BOTH the Liberal and Labor parties have reached out to our Asian neighbours at different times in different ways. However, the idea that it was Labor that first reached out to Asia misrepresents the historical facts.
The conservative side of politics has a track record of offering a hands-across-the-water approach to our geopolitical neighbourhood.
External affairs minister John Latham’s groundbreaking trip to Asia in 1934, for example, was a milestone, along with Percy Spender’s far-sighted Colombo Plan, and Robert Menzies’ coining of the term the Near North to replace the term the …

RESPECT for the independence of the judiciary has always been a central Liberal Party policy. Sadly, this no longer applies in Queensland.
The Newman government’s savage attacks on the judiciary have damaged Queensland’s national and international reputation. This matters mightily in today’s global economy, as it directly affects the state’s ability to attract investment, research money and economic growth.
It is not in Queensland’s business interests to look like an autocratic banana republic. In particular, the Newman government’s slanging match with nationally respected crime fighter Tony Fitzgerald is extremely damaging among most …

JUST as on the footy field, a fundamental rule of international relations is that if you drop the ball, someone else will kick it or pick it up and make it difficult for you to regain the initiative. The Russians, of all people, have just demonstrated that. Tony Abbott has had a painful lesson in the law of unintended consequences.
The spark may have been the revelation that the Australians had bugged Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s mobile phone and that of his wife for 15 days in 2009. But it’s …

Politicians nowadays are often so carefully managed and so terrified of offending that many are mere cardboard cut-outs whose minders do everything they can to suppress their personalities.
Former New South Wales Premier J.T. (“Jack) Lang wouldn’t have put up with that. This larger than life politician with a bristling black moustache and a distinctive rasping voice was utterly unforgettable.
Lang was perhaps our most feisty parliamentarian – who served two terms as NSW Premier from 1925-27 & 1930-32.
Another equally fascinating character was the reformist Labor Premier E. G. (“Red …

JOSH Frydenberg, the energetic 42-year-old federal MP for the affluent inner-Melbourne electorate of Kooyong, is the first Liberal Jewish member of the House of Representatives.
On the face of it this seems remarkable, especially as eight Jewish convicts were transported to Botany Bay in 1788 on the so-called First Fleet.
The talented Frydenberg, who champions a modern version of classical liberalism, is heavily influenced by the humane and civil ideas of Zelman Cowen, – our second Jewish governor-general, – and especially by Australia’s longest serving prime minister, Robert Menzies, who held Kooyong …

FREEDOM of speech has never been more threatened in Australia. A raft of ostensibly well-meaning anti-discrimination legislation is casting a pall of censorship and political correctness over the nation.
Everywhere you look some person or group is metaphorically taping someone else’s mouth shut.
Not so long ago a member of the Greens attempted to muzzle the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, for daring to instruct NSW Catholic MPs that therapeutic cloning and stem-cell research are morally wrong. While many of us disagree with Pell’s views, it is wrong to attempt …

WITH the horse race that stops a nation, indeed the race that now captivates the world, happening on Tuesday, I’m reminded of a time, many years ago, when I was a prodigious punter.
While I was on the booze, one of the worst questions to ask me was, “Who are you? What do you do?”
If I was playing Aussie rules football I’d say I was a philosopher; if I was with philosophers I’d say I was a footballer; with straights, I’d be gay; with gays, I’d be straight. But deep down …

THE year 2011 was the year when people born straight after World War II turned 65. These were the thin end of a very large wedge.
The baby-boomers, that huge demographic group that has been slowly making its way up through the age brackets, are now starting to reach retirement age.
This presents a problem for governments and the economy in general.
The demand for aged care is likely to double, then triple over the next few decades with the costs rising commensurately.
Superannuation has been regarded as the answer to the problem, …

BELIEVE it or not, our eloquent, long-serving conservative prime minister Robert Gordon Menzies was tongue-tied as a child and terrified of public speaking.
Menzies was born in the small Victorian country town of Jeparit in December 1894, the year of the second great shearers’ strike. His father ran a general store.
As Menzies’ daughter, Heather Henderson, points out in this memoir, after having been a student at Melbourne’s prestigious Wesley College, her father became a successful barrister and then Victoria’s, and later Australia’s, attorney-general. After a disappointing and divisive prime ministership from …