MY father, Bill, was not a liar, so it must have been me. I always thought Dad played football for Collingwood Firsts; in fact he only played for the seconds. I must have blown him up in my imagination to be a hero.
In my child’s mind, Dad was famous. I can still see a caricature of him from the newspapers when he captained Sandringham in the Victorian Football Association – all knee bandages and broken-boned – which we kept pinned on the toilet door. Placing it there strikes me now …

THIS month in 1935 the world’s most successful self-help group, Alcoholics Anonymous, was founded in Akron, Ohio. As it happens, it was in Akron and in Cleveland, Ohio, that I did a lot of drinking myself in the 1960s.
I turn 69 on Christmas Day. And if I survive until Australia Day I will have had no alcohol or other drugs for 44 years. This means that, with the support of AA, I’ve had 44 more years on the planet than I would have had.

Like a lot of teenagers who are …

The incompetence of the Labor government is illustrated by Central Queensland University, writes Ross Fitzgerald.
Back in July 2009, Bernard Lane reported in ‘The Australian’: ”Central Queensland University, once the most aggressive player in the degrees for visas market, is running out of cash and has little ability to withstand further blows to its high-risk business model, an official report warns.”
Then acting federal education minister Mark Arbib said the Commonwealth government was ”determined to address the decline in regional student numbers” and would work with the university and the state government …

‘THE Major Minor Party’ is a play performed by Sydney theatre group Version 1.0. Last week it had its world premiere at the Canberra Theatre. Based around the rise of the Sex Party in Australian politics, the play examines the relationships between our major and minor parties.
It couldn’t have come at a more auspicious time. A few kilometres away across Lake Burley Griffin in the federal parliament, the major parties were involved in another form of theatre that related to minor parties.
A few weeks ago the major parties announced a …

WHEN Julia Gillard launched the Labor government’s response to the Gonski report she said her centrepiece was an “an extra $14.5 billion in public investment over the next six years”.
Whether the Prime Minister actually plans on spending this money or not is largely becoming irrelevant – chances are that both she and her loyal deputy, Wayne Swan, will be looking for new jobs come September 15.

According to opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey, the promise of “extra” funding was essentially “a slipshod attempt to bribe more Australians into voting for a …

MEDICINAL use of cannabis should be permitted in Australia.
In 2013, we should not still be merely discussing this possibility. On Wednesday, a NSW parliamentary committee, chaired by Nationals upper house MP Sarah Mitchell, unanimously recommended that medicinal cannabis be permitted for some people with certain terminal conditions.

At present, 18 states in the US allow medical marijuana and a further 10 are considering it. Apart from providing genuine alternatives to existing medicines, this approach has kick-started a plethora of scientific research on cannabis by an industry that has until recently been …

JULIA Gillard is desperately searching for a legacy to establish her place in history beyond the fact that she is the first woman to hold the prime ministership.
As matters stand, she is destined to be remembered as the Labor leader who knifed a popular but flawed leader in Kevin Rudd, lost Labor’s majority at the 2010 election and then (if current polls are any indication) led Labor to its worst ever loss at the 2013 election.

The deterioration in the nation’s finances under Gillard’s watch and her failure to balance the …

The Way We Approach Higher Education Needs To Change, writes ROSS FITZGERALD
ALTHOUGH I very much enjoy writing political satires such as my co-authored ‘Fools’ Paradise: Life In An Altered State’, set in the fictitious University of Mangoland, sadly neither my recent suggestions to cut the number of universities and vice-chancellors in Australia – particularly in the regions – nor the 2008 Bradley Review recommendation that our university sector requires serious structural change, were satires.
As the now publicly declared cuts of $2.4 billion to higher education funding and John Daley’s recent …

IT is hard to avoid the impression that Julia Gillard is a prime minister in waiting – waiting to be dumped on September 14.
Though many may now regard her government as being in caretaker mode, Labor is still scrambling with whatever it has left to convince Australians it deserves a renewed term in Canberra.
With the voting public seemingly not listening to the Prime Minister any more, and the continuing malaise in opinion polls that has Labor wallowing around a 30 per cent primary vote, it suggests our citizenry gave up …

Labors fractional sub-factions active in the west
Factional manoeuvring is alive and well in the Labor Party.
The latest prime example occurred on Monday last week, at a meeting of the West Australian state executive. The headline story coming out of the nights proceedings in Perth was the choice of Joe Bullock to head Labor’s Senate ticket for the federal election. His success precipitated the retirement of Senator Mark Bishop, who no longer could get a winnable spot on the ticket.
The West Australian executive also had to fill a …

UNLESS there is an electoral miracle, the Gillard government will lose badly on September 14.
The election will be potentially devastating for Labor, especially in states like NSW and Queensland where it will lose some of its most talented members and possibly several senior ministers including Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Wayne Swan.
In the aftermath Labor will need to use common sense and a strategic approach to rebuild the party. Indeed it needs to start thinking about that now, otherwise a coalition government led by Tony Abbott will be in office …