THE issue of gambling addiction is still a political hot potato that no one seems too keen to handle. The issue is wider than just poker machines and the ponies, however, and we should also look at the addiction to alcohol, which seems to have been largely forgotten. Smokers are pariahs and problem gamblers objects of pity while the drinkers drink on. Meanwhile the alcoholic or compulsive gambler (often these two problems are combined) still receive little help in Australia. So, too, their families.
Recently Christopher Lawford Kennedy, the only son …

WHILE most government members were trumpeting the Peter Slipper defection at the end of last year as a triumph for Julia Gillard, I recall one Labor frontbencher privately likening the situation to the Prime Minister knowingly lighting up an exploding cigar.
Designed to deliver a two-vote turnaround in the House of Representatives, with the former speaker Harry Jenkins returning to the government benches and the Coalition losing Slipper to the Speaker’s chair, it was a political fix destined to blow up in the PM’s face.
But despite intense media speculation surrounding the …

Scrutinise MPs’ networks as well as their wallets
Parliamentarians don’t take interest declarations seriously, ROSS FITZGERALD writes

When the Australian Sex Party’s president, Fiona Patten, called for a register of religious interests to be set up for federal MPs a couple of weeks ago, it piqued my interest. She claimed that within the register of members’ interests, section 13 required them to list their involvement with religious organisations. As the federal government gives millions of dollars to religious organisations every year, she argued that religious affiliation had the potential to cause a …

IN a desperate bid, Heather Beattie has entered the fray. How the ALP handles its defeat in NSW, Victoria and Queensland will determine the length of time it spends in opposition. In NSW and Victoria the party still has time to rebuild but in Queensland the ALP is facing another crucial electoral test with national ramifications.
In Queensland, Labor finished with a meagre seven out of 89 seats at the March 24 election; the worst result of the three states. But the next test for the Labor party is not three …

BY ignoring the opinion pollsters and seeing off Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard might have believed she had finally bought the time she needed to reconstruct her reputation and, more importantly, her government’s re-election hopes.
Labor’s Queensland massacre – where a maxi cab would be more than sufficient to carry what’s left of the entire state party – only brings the daunting challenge ahead into sharper focus.
The Prime Minister needs to push back her own election date to as late as possible next year, to give her the time and space to …

THE celebrated psychoanalyst Carl Jung once said: “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”
In many respects, former federal Labor leader Mark Latham is the self-appointed psychoanalyst of the Labor Party and he most certainly understands the darkness within the ALP.
A devoted student of the Labor Party and a talented writer, Latham reserves his harshest criticisms for those he describes as the “machine” men and women, who can be broadly defined as career politicians with little or no experience outside politics.
These so-called …

SAINT Patrick’s Day is a day to celebrate, but it also marks one of the most infamous incidents in Australian political history.
On March 17, 1948, in Brisbane, something very significant happened, something that deserves to be remembered – especially as Queensland gears up for a crucial state election.
On that day, Australia’s first and only Communist Party MP, Frederick (“Fred”) Woolnough Paterson, was savagely bashed by a plain-clothes policeman – almost certainly on the direct orders of authoritarian ALP state premier E.M. (“Ned”) Hanlon.
This brutal attack occurred while Fred Paterson was …

THE Supreme Court will rule today on whether The Australian Party can legally stand as an abbreviation of Katter’s Australian Party at Queensland’s March 24 election.
Such an abbreviation is, the latter argues, a form of discrimination.
Founded by the maverick federal Independent MP for the vast federal seat of Kennedy, Bob Katter, the party has announced that if its abbreviation is allowed to stand, it could challenge the result in up to 76 of the 89 seats in Queensland’s one-house parliament.
Katter’s attempts to change the way his party is represented on …

WARNINGS about the role of “faceless men” in the ALP have been a feature of modern Australian politics since 1963. That was the year in which Robert Menzies won a federal election by turning it into a virtual referendum directed against the power of such unelected apparatchiks. This abiding fascination with Labor’s faceless men peaked again on June 24, 2010.
Over the course of a single night, Australia got a new Labor Prime Minister courtesy of a party coup orchestrated by a cabal of sub-factional heavyweights.
Judged by Wednesday’s declaration of war …

THE Liberal National Party will almost certainly win government after the Queensland election on March 24, but it may prove to be a rather more difficult task than many pundits think.
To begin with, the state’s electoral boundaries favour Labor, giving Premier Anna Bligh a six-seat head start, and together with the benefits of incumbency her government is still not dead and buried.
Bligh is an experienced operator who is running an extremely tough campaign.
Because the LNP’s extra-parliamentary leader Campbell Newman is the frontrunner, he is under huge media pressure and scrutiny …

ROSS Fitzgerald is a well known journalist, historian and novelist (the Grafton Everest series). He is also a survivor of alcoholism, which led him to psychiatric wards, shock therapy, and suicide attempts. Alcoholics Anonymous not only gave him faith in the power to accept his condition, but the will to help others. AA is a community of people who have faith – in God, in humanity, in the power to overcome the weakest part of themselves.
Hear the interview with Ross Fitzgerald on ABC Radio, February 5, 2012
Click here to listen