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 …

The PM has wisely realised journalism’s frantic pace in incompatible with good government, writes ROSS FITZGERALD
CHANGES to the communications landscape pose enormous challenges for the executives of companies in the traditional media of print newspapers and radio and television stations.
The loss to internet companies of the “rivers of gold” classified advertising that underpinned the profitability of ‘The Sydney Morning Herald’ and ‘The Age’ is a prime example.
Other developments include the emergence of 24-hour news services such as SkyNews Australia and the availability of CNN, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others …

MINI-CAMPUSES THREATEN TO HURT TERTIARY EDUCATION RIGHT ACROSS AUSTRALIA, WRITES ROSS FITZGERALD
A KEY question facing federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne as he begins his much-needed tertiary education review is how to ensure the financial viability of higher education in Australia.
Pyne needs to understand that it makes no sense for regional universities to try to balance their budgets by running mini-campuses in capital city CBD’s.
The sad reality is that, in order for mini-campuses to compete with capital city based universities, there is a costly race to the bottom.
Operating a regional …

Among other reforms, let’s introduce electronic voting to speed up the process, writes ROSS FITZGERALD
ELECTION night and its subsequent celebrations or commiserations for victors and losers hold a special place for Australian political aficionados.
David Williamson’s 1971 classic ‘Don’s Party’ is still a regular on the repertory scene – its story of dashed political expectations of a Labor victory as the results come in on a long-past election night is an experience many Australians can still appreciate.

Whether it is Laurie Oakes or David Speers or Antony Green churning through seat after …

PORNOGRAPHY, non-violent erotica, blue movies, whatever you want to call it these days, doesn’t get the headlines that it once did. This is because the genre has mostly moved onto a different platform and is now largely beyond the reach of regulators.
Every now and then some feminists raise moral issues about certain types of ‘gonzo’ or radical material that transgresses ‘acceptable’ boundaries. But by and large, middle-class Australia appears to be negotiating explicit sex on the Internet without any moral outrage or evidence of actual harm.
In fact, the X-rated movie …

TWELVE months ago yesterday, my closest friend in Alcoholics Anonymous in Sydney – Stephen Clarke – died, aged 85.
His life was a testimony to the efficacy of AA in saving tens of thousands of men and women whose lives previously had been blighted by alcoholism. Hence the funeral for “Steve from Gordon”, as he was widely known, was attended by almost 200 people, most of them AA members he had inspired and helped through the decades.
Sober for 48 years, Steve touched the lives of so many people, not just in …

THE election of a number of small party representatives in last week’s Senate election is both good and bad for Australian democracy.
A record number of registered parties and candidates ran for both houses of Parliament. As expected, the ALP, the Coalition and the Greens ran candidates in all lower house seats and in all jurisdictions for the Senate. They receive millions of dollars in public funding.
What was amazing was that for the first time we saw a new player contesting all seats – the Palmer United Party. Mr. Palmer, a …

DESPITE the desperate spin that the campaign went quite well, the reality is that federal Labor is in turmoil and disarray.
In fact, the ALP post Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, desperately needs a straight shooter who can reinvigorate fundamental Labor values and move the party away from the highly damaging Greens-Labor alliance.
Neither Bill Shorten – who now seems tainted by his last-minute conversion to the Rudd camp – nor Bob Carr – who is stranded in the Senate – have these requisite qualities. Moreover the ALP populist ex Queensland premier …

IN the immediate aftermath of the Sydney Swans triumphing in an epic AFL grand final last year, pundits and punters alike asked if it was the best decider in the 115-year history of “our game”. Certainly, this far from fanatical Aussie rules follower, like many others, was transfixed by the late unfolding drama that day.
And with Sydney taking out the premiership by 10 points over Hawthorn, the emerald city was awash with red-and-white-clad supporters celebrating a memorable season, along with not a few out-of-the-woodwork hangers-on who will climb aboard the …

THERE may still exist some true believers, such as ALP tragic Bob Ellis, who predict a Labor victory, hoping against hope that Kevin Rudd will stand up tonight to repeat the lines of Labor’s great comeback kid Paul Keating and describe it as “the sweetest victory of all”.
Were he to pull off the unthinkable, after what arguably has been Labor’s worst federal election campaign, Rudd would deserve to be anointed as one of Labor’s immortals.
But if the polls are correct and (as I predicted early in the campaign) Tony Abbott …