(Friday May 30, 2008) Many thanks for that kind introduction Michael. In fact, I am just finishing book number 30 , a history of alcohol in Australia, entitled A Nation Under the Influence.
Just before I hopped on the plane, my wife Lyndal reminded me of a scathing review of my work written by one of mine many enemies in Queensland. This devastating attack concluded, “Ross Fitzgerald is one of Australia’s most prolific, yet least read, authors.”
The sad fact is that, in many ways, …

PAST PRESENT FUTURE: THE NEED FOR A UNITED CONSERVATIVE FORCE IN QUEENSLAND
SPEECH TO THE QUEENSLAND NATIONALS
PRESIDENT’S CLUB, Stamford Plaza Hotel, Brisbane.
FRIDAY 30 MAY, 2008, 6.30 – 7. 30pm
Many thanks for that kind introduction Michael. In fact, I am just finishing book number 30 , a history of alcohol in Australia, entitled A Nation Under the Influence.
Just before I hopped on the plane, my wife Lyndal reminded me of a scathing review of my work written by one of mine many enemies in Queensland. This devastating attack concluded, “Ross Fitzgerald is …

REFORMIST and modernising are not words usually associated with the Queensland Nationals, an organisation often still associated with the excesses of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era, writes Ross Fitzgerald.
Yet in guiding the push to merge the state Nationals and the Liberal Party, Queensland Nationals leader Lawrence Springborg is proving to be a reformer and moderniser of non-Labor politics at a state and, possibly, a national level.
Unlike the rest of Australia, in Queensland the Nationals remain the dominant partner in the Coalition by a ratio of two to one, with the Liberals …

OUR existing system of university governance was designed to support academic freedom and excellence, but as universities have corporatised themselves, vice-chancellors are no longer primarily guardians of academic standards but rather see themselves as chief executives. Yet, with a number of conspicuous exceptions, too often our VCs seem to behave as naive and gullible amateurs.
Universities Australia (the “industry” peak body) appears content with the status quo under which chief executive authority rests with the vice-chancellor (increasingly also called the president), who is supposedly accountable to a council, senate or board …

It’s going to happen to us all eventually and how we cope with it may, in the end, define us.
For some growing old is a spiritual experience, for others there’s nothing transcendental at all about the experience.
Some rage against ageing while others have a good laugh at their own expense.
Contributors to Growing Old (Dis)gracefullyshare their experiences, hopes and fears, insights and otherwise on life on the other side of fifty.
The contributors are Peter and Heather Beattie; Robyn Williams; Robbie Swan; Quentin Dempster; Phil Brown; Hal Alexander; Ian Pike AO; Anne …

FOR years I have been arguing that the only hope the conservatives have of defeating Labor in Queensland is a single united party.
I have also argued that the recently re-elected National Party leader Lawrence Springborg, who at age 21 was the youngest person to take a seat in Queensland Parliament, is far and away the most talented of the state’s conservative MPs.
First elected to the one-house Queensland Parliament in 1989, the member for Southern Downs was Queensland’s youngest cabinet minister when in 1998, aged 29, he became minister for natural …

A HARD-HITTING American study from the Rand Corporation – hardly a soft and fuzzy organisation – found that every dollar spent on treating drug and alcohol addiction saved seven dollars in law enforcement. But this research has had little impact on policy directions in any country, let alone the US. Treatment services remain under-funded while police and corrective services still get the big dollars. This does little more than service the status quo.
Meanwhile more recent research, the internationally acclaimed Australian Treatment Outcomes Study, which was completed in the past three …