WHILE gossip and other personal distractions have marred this federal election campaign, none of the three main parties has put forward a convincing policy regarding significant national infrastructure projects.
Kevin Rudd’s failure to deliver on a national emissions scheme and the failed insulation scheme seem to have given both sides of politics performance anxiety.
With our roads increasingly clogging up with semitrailers, a new national rail scheme should have been proposed at this election. Australia’s rail system is little better than that of many Third World countries, and while state governments are …
JULIA Gillard is seeking election in her own right after she replaced Kevin Rudd as prime minister six weeks ago following an eruption of factional intrigue and personal ambition in the ALP. The successful coup was orchestrated by union and party insiders whose names — Feeney, Arbib, Bitar, Marles, Farrell, Shorten, Ludwig, Howes — meant little or nothing to the wider voting public.
In a wonderful coincidence, Rudd’s fall at the hands of the ALP’s present crop of faceless men occurred at almost the same time as my co-authored biography of …
‘Ah, here’s the apostate.’ The voice was a cigarette-flavoured drawl from a slight figure with a hat tipped on his head. This, in the Bulletin office in March 1978, my first day as a journalist after six years with the Labor Council — hence the ‘apostate’. The speaker was Alan Reid, breaker of tabloid stories, most of them harmful to the Australian Labor Party, and, according to Paul Keating, an ‘infamous Labor hater’.
Labor wasn’t his only victim. John Grey Gorton, Liberal prime minister from 1968 to 1971, felt Reid had …
Where truth lies
In my first year at Monash University in 1962 our wonderful history lecturer, Geoffrey Bolton, encouraged us all to read the London-born E. H. Carr’s provocative ‘What is History?’, which had been published the year before. This involved us thinking about the nature of historical truth and the complex relationship(s) between historians and the past. We were especially encouraged to confront the thorny issues of historical interpretation and of whether matters of fact and of value can clearly be differentiated.
Unlike Carr, Ann Curthoys & John Docker fundamental …
THE Coalition’s proposal to allow schools to self-manage projects makes perfect sense.
It is a bizarre irony that the former minister for education, Julia Gillard, succeeded Kevin Rudd as prime minister when it is the waste and mismanagement of a program she is entirely responsible for that seriously damaged the Rudd government’s credibility and contributed to his downfall.
Given what we know about Gillard’s abilities, it is not surprising that, during the first few weeks of her administration, the wheels have fallen off her solution to stop the influx of asylum-seekers, and …
There is no graduation class. You have to go to the school of AA for the rest of your life, one day at a time.
His name is Ross and he’s an alcoholic. Don’t blame me. He outed himself in his own book. He can thank the Almighty God that no one reads any more or everyone will be pointing at him. On the other hand he has no one to blame but himself. He doesn’t even believe in God so he adds “Please before the Serenity Prayer so it goes …
“Go for your life, sport.” That was my curt introduction to Alan Reid, the doyen of the Canberra press gallery. As a green young hack in the mid-1960s I’d tip-toed into the Daily Telegraph office in old Parliament House wanting to cadge some telex time to file my copy to Sydney. Reid was perched in his usual corner like a vulture in a rumpled suit, a roll-your-own durrie in his nicotine-stained fingers. It was a Saturday afternoon. All the politicians were back in their electorates, but The Red Fox …
Who took the damning 1963 photographs of “the 36 Faceless Men”? Although actually it was 35 Men and one ‘Faceless’ Woman!
Professor Ross Fitzgerald’s speech about ALAN (“THE RED FOX”) REID at Dalton’s Books, 54 Marcus Clarke St, crn Rudd Street, Canberra, Wednesday June 30, 6 pm.
Thanks indeed Laurie (Oakes). As recent events here in Canberra demonstrate, in the ALP the faceless men and the factional warlords certainly live on! In many ways, the tiny Machiavellian world of Alan Reid is virtually the same world that made Julia Gillard PM.
In his …
Julia Gillard once pledged herself to the unions, but today her allegiances are unclear.
AS the dust settles over the prime ministerial demise of Kevin Rudd and the hype surrounding Julia Gillard subsides, the questions remain: who is she and what does she stand for?
The fact that Gillard was parachuted into the job of prime minister by the largely “faceless” union backroom boys has led to the inevitable claim that she is a puppet of the union movement. Gillard recognised she needed to move quickly to counter that impression and declared …
Ross Fitzgerald also asks Why is the AFL so desperate for a second team from Sydney.
THIS week we had rugby league’s shameful State of Origin, and now I’m looking forward to an AFL contest that promises to be infinitely more captivating.
Sydney’s favourite AFL team, the Swans, plays my team, Collingwood, at ANZ Stadium next Saturday night in what will be a crucial match for their chances of making the finals.
Thus all AFL attention will be on the clash between the red and whites and the mighty Magpies, played in …
You may be interested to know that this fine film-noir front cover photograph of ALAN (“THE RED FOX”) REID almost never saw the light of day because two influential people, who shall remain nameless, did not want to see in 2010 a photo of someone smoking a cigarette! How about that? Yet sadly, although he stopped drinking and gambling, Reid never stopped smoking, and eventually died of lung and stomach cancer.
Speaking of photos, in our biography of Alan Reid the mystery of the ALP’s Faceless Men story and photos has …
