THESE days, I no longer avidly follow horse racing. But every now and then, I read about an outsider that bolts to the front at long odds and, despite the best efforts of the favourites, will not be run down.
Using this analogy, many of the inner-city electorates in Australia are becoming like electoral racetracks for bolters. The latest byelection for the state seat of Melbourne, to be held on Saturday week, is a case in point. Much to the chagrin of many Liberals, the party is not even fielding a …

IT is unusual for an historian to endorse an historical novel – but that is exactly what happened recently, when Ross Fitzgerald, Professor Emeritus of History at Griffith University, publicly endorsed Noel Beddoe’s novel The Yalda Crossing. Mark Colvin interviews both men, inquiring about the relationship between the Wiradjuri people and white settlers in and around the Murrumbidgee River.
Listen to the interview

WITH far too many exceptions, a new sense of reality seems at last to be dawning across the governments of Western nations that the age of entitlement may be coming to an end. British Prime Minister David Cameron took a leadership role by proposing a stunning blow to a population long accustomed to feeding at the public teat.
Cameron has decided to take on the culture of entitlement that has become an ingrained component of the welfare state.
In doing so he’s taking a political risk, but the stark reality is that …

QUEENSLAND politics has always had larger than life personalities.
From the National Party’s Joh Bjelke-Petersen to Labor’s Peter Beattie, the state has produced characters who have given its politics a national reputation for seldom being dull.
Now it is a one-time supporter of the “Joh for PM” campaign, which derailed a bid by John Howard to become prime minister, who is causing more than a ripple and embarrassing Tony Abbott and Queensland Liberal National Party Premier Campbell Newman.

The latest public outbursts of billionaire Clive Palmer have enlivened politics with a vigorous campaign …

FEDERAL elections usually come down to a struggle for the hearts, minds and votes of Australians living in marginal seats.
The demographics of many of these seats are remarkably similar, located in the outer suburbs of our main cities or inland regional or coastal areas.
The issues that concern voters in marginal seats are also remarkably similar. Concerns about employment are paramount, followed by housing affordability, mortgage pressures and the cost of living: electricity, groceries, healthcare, childcare and education. It is no accident that federal political parties focus primarily on the hip …

COPING with a hung parliament is increasingly an unenjoyable experience for the federal government but it did not need to be so. The Prime Minister’s bleak prospects stand in sharp contrast to what happened under her great Labor predecessor, John Curtin, when he was in the same situation. The wartime parliament of 1940 to 1943, in which no one party had a majority, saw him gain office and wield power magnificently.
One point of contrast, in particular, is quite eerie. It is not widely known that Curtin’s task in removing Australia’s …

IN their wisdom, the organisers of last week’s World No Tobacco Day decided to devote the main thrust of their message to the evil tobacco companies and their interference in the politics of people quitting smoking cigarettes.
The WNTD posters show a dark, malevolent man who looks like a badly dressed Mossad agent, defacing a No Smoking sign.
The word “Intimidation” is written big and red across the top of the page. Apart from the fact the message behind the image is not at all clear on first viewing, negative campaigns like …

THREE years down the track after being unceremoniously ejected from the Roman Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Brisbane, the community of St. Mary’s in Exile (SMX) has more than survived. It continues to attract people who are disillusioned by the doctrines and dogmas and liturgical practices of institutional religion. Indeed, each week up to a thousand attend SMX.
Fathers Peter Kennedy and Terry Fitzpatrick took most of their community with them, just down the road from St Mary’s Church to the Trades and Labour Council building in South Brisbane. Kennedy …

THERE has been no shortage of hypocrisy in the saga that engulfs the beleaguered federal MP Craig Thomson.
Rational people tend to act out of self-interest, and politicians are no different. It is therefore understandable that Julia Gillard should have sought to prolong her time as the head of the government by seeking to protect Thomson.
Similarly, it is perfectly legitimate for the Coalition to apply pressure to the government and Thomson as it seeks to take over the reins of power.

However, as deputy opposition leader Julie Bishop cogently stated in the …

PATRICK Victor Martindale White was born in Knightsbridge, London, 100 years ago this month. As befits his standing as a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, his centenary is a significant cultural event for Australia and deserves serious analysis as well as celebration. From 1935 until his death in Sydney on September 30, 1990, White published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.
This year’s centenary will most likely reinforce White’s standing as an Australian icon, but we need to remember that, as a writer, he toiled away for …

PERHAPS the funniest recent satire about writers’ festivals is Michael Wilding’s Superfluous Men, published in 2009.
Having recently re-read Wilding’s expose I thought I’d go to see and hear him at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival, which is being held from May 14-20.
Imagine my annoyance when I noticed Wilding was on at the same time as Frank Moorhouse. This seemed more than a bit careless since Wilding and Moorhouse have, over the years, attracted virtually the same audience: “The two parts of a pantomime horse”, as Martin Johnston rightly called them. …