• Time to say goodbye
    To me, Ad Astra, “Time to say goodbye” are among the saddest
    words in our language. Yet say them now we must. I chose Ad Astra
    as my moniker because my secondary school’s motto is ‘sic itur ad astra’,
    which can be liberally interpreted as: “Here is the way to the stars”.
    How inspiring these words have always been to me.
  • Have we got a deal for you
    There is a conspiracy theory that suggests that birds (in the USA
    at least) aren’t real. The claim is that all the birds in the USA were
    hunted down by the government between the late 50’s and early
    70s and replaced with bird like drones to spy on you.
  • Get out of the gutter
    You may not have heard of Mike Rinder. A Scientologist for most
    of his life, at the age of 52 he walked out, and as a result lost his
    family, friends, employment and pretty well everything else in his life.
    RInder has written a book on his time in Scientology, runs a
    website that questions Scientology beliefs and practices...
  • Was Amtrak Joe derailed?
    Prior to becoming President, Joe Biden was a US Senator for around
    36 years. He is known as Amtrak Joe as he routinely took the daily 90
    minute each way train trip (on the USA’s national passenger train network
    - Amtrak) from his home in Delaware to Washington DC to represent his state.
  • If employers can measure well-being...
    Last September, you might have seen Qantas CEO Alan Joyce
    received a pay increase of $278,000 per annum. It seems that Joyce
    has met or exceeded the performance goals set by his employers and
    contractually has earned the reward. It does, however, raise a larger question.
  • Coming back to haunt you
    In his recent Budget reply speech, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton
    laboured (pun intended) on the increasingly difficult to achieve promise by
    Prime Minister Albanese that power bills will be $275 less in 2025. While the
    government is claiming the modelling done in 2021 supports the accuracy of
    the promise, 2021 modelling doesn’t account for changes in circumstances since then.

The Political Sword

Get the inside track on the media and government.

Protest and perish?

There have recently been a number of ‘freedom’ rallies across Australia where participants seem to be claiming that the current pandemic is somewhere between a farce and a ‘deep cover’ operation by unnamed authorities to exert control over the mindless minions (that’s the rest of us). Some who shoul...

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The dog ate my homework

When you were a toddler and those responsible for looking after you asked you to do something you didn’t want to do, you probably threw a tantrum. A couple of years later when you had learnt to communicate, you probably expressed your disapproval (then threw a tantrum when your disapproval was noted...

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Sameness

Asked what he wanted from life, a wise man said: I want to live; I want to be loved; and I want a little variety. This piece is about the latter: “a little variety”. Are you, like me, wearied by the sameness of so much of contemporary life? Multiple lockdowns occasioned by Covid-19 has afflict...

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Compassion – you’re kidding

In October 2019, this website discussed the fate of the Murugappen family who were forcibly removed from their home in Biloela, Queensland by Border Force. At the time we questioned how someone who claims to have a fundamentalist Christian view of the Bible as the absolute truth (despite the ‘over 7...

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Just get the jab(s)

The wailing and gnashing of teeth that you can currently hear in your community isn’t a product of the sporting results last weekend or the sudden correction of housing prices. Rather it is the anti-vaxxers and their fellow travellers living the experience they feared — namely those who are vaccinat...

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The gasfired recovery

One of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s grand announcements early in the pandemic was the formation of a group of business and technical experts to plan the way out of the (then assumed) deep economic pandemic recession. The theory was this group of ‘experts’ would develop the mitigation strategy for...

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Where is our Greta?

Here she is - looking at us, looking right into us, right into our soul, just as she was on the title page of the UK version of The Big Issue. Writing in it, Adrian Lobb begins: In August 2018, Greta Thunberg took a stand. One small act of defiance for a 15-year-old Swedish girl became on...

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Pants on fire

It’s not only Crikey subscribers that have read the list of Prime Minster Morrison’s lies and falsehoods they published recently as it’s not paywalled. Crikey claims they applied a rigorous test to their claims and only ‘counted’ those lies and falsehoods they could provide evidence to validate. The...

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It’s not dumb luck, is it more sinister

Australia has been fortunate through the COVID-19 pandemic. The infections and deaths due to COVID-19 have been far less than others by percentage of population, the economy is apparently returning to some form of normal and life is not greatly impacted for most Australians on a day-to-day basis. Re...

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The charade of representative government

Why do I use the term ‘charade’? Because I believe representative government is “an absurd pretence intended to create a pleasant or respectable appearance” about the concept of government of the people, for the people, by the people. This piece is an attempt to convince you of this charade, if inde...

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Bring out the dogwhistle

An unfortunate fact of life in Australian politics since the early 1800s has been the racist dogwhistle. Consider the evidence of mass executions of first nations peoples that lived in Australia for thousands of years before Dirk Hartog (the first European to leave an artefact on the Australian cont...

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The price of arrogance

It’s all very well for us to say how much we deplore the arrogance of our Prime Minister, but as Aussies who live under his ‘rule’ we can’t avoid the awkward fact that those who live elsewhere may see us as tarred with the same brush! How easy would it be for them to believe arrogance is an Australi...

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Déjà vu

To minimise the pain of reminding you of the shocking destruction that is occurring day after day in Gaza City, I have kept this piece short. I have found writing it distressing, yet the story needs to be told. It is part of our grotesque contemporary reality. As you watch your TV news do you des...

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Cigarettes, whiskey and electric cars

Those of a certain age might remember the regular headlines in the 1970s and 1980s after the federal budget that screamed ‘Smokes and Beer tax up again’. There was a double benefit to the government of the day in raising the consumption taxes on tobacco and alcohol products. Not only did they increa...

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Prime Minister Frydenberg

Does anyone doubt that Josh Frydenberg covets the role of Prime Ministership of Australia? If he succeeds, would he be the first Jewish PM in this country? Search though I have, I cannot discover whether there has ever been an Australian PM of the Jewish faith. Perhaps one of you may know. If ...

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Disarray

This piece won’t take you long to read. Its message is clear, precise, and uncomplicated. The social media abounds with descriptors of the Morrison Government. Few are complimentary. Many are rude, even obscene. Many emanate from an adversarial viewpoint. There are few restraints on those seeking...

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Is it the truth?

The company that makes a lot of the voting machines used in the recent US election is suing a number of individuals, groups and companies that manufactured and promoted the lie that the US election was rigged in part due to the algorithms used in the voting machines. The company’s allegation is that...

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The empathy deficit

Like most winners at the conclusion of an election process, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has claimed on a couple of occasions that he would consider the hopes and ambitions of all Australians while he is the Prime Minister. The first time was when he mounted his quixotic charge past Peter Dutton to...

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Be Human

About 12 months ago, we were asking if the world could ever return to ‘normal’ post the pandemic. Some were looking for equitable economic reform, others were looking for significant environmental reforms and others were looking for improvement in an area close to their personal experience or belief...

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The day Scott Morrison lost the next election

Note the date in your diary - 15 March 2021 - because the date itself is not memorable. You will never forget the day though - the day thousands of angry women gathered outside Parliament House in their March4Justice campaign to highlight the appalling misogyny and mistreatment of women, both in and...

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