Wilkie holds a match to the dynamite fuse

ONE of the time bombs ticking away at the heart of Julia Gillard’s fragile government is her promise to Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie that she will deliver poker machine reforms by the middle of next year.

Few people believe the Prime Minister will be able to force the system of mandatory pre-commitment through the Labor caucus, let alone federal parliament.
It is through pure cynicism that Gillard has persisted with …

The touchy topic of our classification system.
A reliable means of gauging broad public opinion is needed.

Clearly many Australians want to have their opinions heard on how, in the foreseeable future, official censorship in this country will be administered. The proof of that is that the Australian Law Reform Commission has received a record 2451 submissions to its inquiry into Australia’s Classification Scheme.
About 10per cent of respondents were from industry groups who use the scheme to derive an income, while another 10per cent were from …

Fool’s Paradise, an extract

Historian and author Ross Fitzgerald has written a new novel, Fool’s Paradise. Picture: Renee Nowytarger Source: The Australian

GRAFTON Everest is Professor of LifeSkills and Hospitality at Mangoland University and unwilling biographer of the state’s former premier Sir Otis Hoogstraden. Grafton’s day job as is under threat from the economically and sexually rapacious vice-chancellor Deirdre Morrow. And …

IN the 2000 Boyer Lectures, then chief justice of Australia Murray Gleeson QC said: “The essential purpose of the criminal law is to keep the peace, so people can lead their lives, and go about their affairs, in reasonable security.”
If that is so, then is it not the case that, in so far as children and other vulnerable people (such as those who are cognitively impaired) are concerned, the aim of the criminal law should be to ensure that their security is absolute?
Yet these people are often the least protected …

Not easy to be jester in court gone mad

IT’S getting harder and harder to write satire. Those of us trying to think up wildly absurd ideas are constantly being undermined and gazumped by reality.

The “real” world has become so absurd. Conservative gays forming the Gay Shooters Party? Look up the Pink Pistols in Wikipedia. Cane toad leather goods? Check out eBay. What about a rock opera based on Milton’s Paradise Lost? Improbable? Well, it has recently been …

IT may only be a part-time position but appointing former Queensland premier Peter Beattie to the newly created position of resource sector supplier envoy is a smart move by the federal government.
Beattie has a strong history in resources and value adding. He changed Queensland’s energy policy in 2000 by requiring 13 per cent of Queensland’s generated energy to come from gas leading to the state’s billion-dollar coal-seam gas industry. Another 2 per cent of generation had to come from renewables. It was a …

AUSTRALIA has long been considered a safe and attractive place to do business. We have a transparent rule of law, strong public institutions and democratically elected governments.

Add to this a record of stable and generally sound policy-making, and we have enjoyed an environment where businesses have a high degree of certainty that their investments will not be subject to inconsistent and bad government decision-making.
Put simply, government, or sovereign, risk in Australia has generally been low.
Unfortunately, this is no longer the case.
Under …

“Wake up, Australia,” Grafton Everest exhorts viewers every morning on Australia-wide breakfast television.
This doesn’t please those he attacks like wily former premier Hoogstraden, whose biography Grafton is forced into writing.
Grafton’s day job as Professor of LifeSkills and Hospitality is under threat from the economically and sexually rapacious Vice-Chancellor Deirdre Morrow.
And Lee Horton, head of Australia’s newly privatised Secret Service (trading as SpyForce Australia) is worried too. He knows that Grafton has trouble lying.
And nothing is more dangerous than a man who habitually tells the truth.
Grafton Everest is a wonderful creation …

THE ghost of “Real Julia” has returned to haunt the Prime Minister, who continues to struggle with her credibility.
If we cast our minds back to last year’s election campaign, the response to the “Real Julia” announcement was that the public wondered whether they had only seen a “Fake Julia” up to that time.
This is the crux of Julia Gillard’s struggle for authority.
This week, the Australian Financial Review claimed, as it now seems wrongly, that when she was deputy prime minister Gillard …

SYDNEY Lord Mayor Clover Moore has offered a lesson to Australia’s other cities. Her campaign against traffic congestion, climate change and alcohol-fuelled violence is bold and commendable. She might not be popular with everyone, especially those with vested interests such as the big liquor industries, but her aim is true: to create a better-functioning, safer global city that is more attractive to residents, workers, visitors and tourists.
Moore has been rounded on by some media and by the new NSW Government for her outspokenness and for Sydney City Council’s recent decision …

THE next federal election may be two years away but Julia Gillard is facing a political cancer that will see either the end of her prime ministership or the end of the federal Labor government.
Political history shows us that when a government is in trouble it needs to take decisive action or its days are numbered.
Too often political parties in trouble develop an inertia and inability to deal with its problems, which ensures its exit from the government benches, usually for more than one term. Where there are internal divisions …