• 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.

Will anyone who really understands emissions trading please speak up

Can anyone remember a piece of legislation about which there has been so much ignorance, so much misinformation, so little reliable expert opinion, and so much politicking, than the emissions trading scheme legislation now known as the carbon pollution reduction scheme? The problem is that s...

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Brendan Nelson says leadership is everything - how does Malcolm Turnbull rate?

There has been a lot of talk about Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership in recent weeks, but little about what political leadership means in operational terms.  Brendan Nelson produced a notable list in an article he penned on August 10 in the SMH: The priorities are party, people and platform...

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The Turnbull reply to the latest Rudd essay

This is not a long piece, because there is little worthwhile that can be said about Malcolm Turnbull’s reply Rudd’s debt to burden future generations in the SMH on August 1.  There has been so much else to write about these last few days that Turnbull’s piece has s...

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The Turnbull endgame?

The Australian today abounds with talk of replacing Malcolm Turnbull as Coalition leader.  Dennis Shanahan and Matthew Franklin wrote a piece Desperate Liberals look to replace Turnbull with Robb, and Shanahan has a blog.  It's a loser or the last man standing.  The sixty c...

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Killing him softly with his words

When did you last see a politician knife his leader and hang him out to dry as openly as Peter Costello did live on air on ABC’s Lateline last night?  This morning’s news of the dawn raids on suspected terrorist cells, the OzCar story and the tabling of the Auditor-General&rs...

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Is the latest Rudd essay all spin?

Ross Gittins gives that impression in his piece in The Age on 27 July: 'Tough' talking PM is all spin.  In it he analyses Kevin Rudd’s latest essay The road to recovery that appeared in the 25 July issue of that paper. Exactly what is ‘political spin’?&nbs...

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Living in a bubble of unreality

Reading today’s editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald, Rudderless leader? creates the feeling that there must be another world out there inhabited by a collection of journalists whose perception of reality is in sharp contrast to that of the man in the street. After publishing th...

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The great heath care awakening

Those involved in primary health care will smile wryly as they read the Final Report of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission of June 2009 - A Healthier Future For All Australians released yesterday and peruse the proposed elements for redesigning the health system.  The fi...

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Is the CPRS really a dog?

How many, other than those steeped in environmental science, have a clear idea about what is entailed in the Government’s CPRS?  Ordinary people could be forgiven for feeling that they are flying through thick climate change fog in an ill-defined direction towards an uncertain destinati...

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The Garrett enigma

It’s happened before, but criticism of Peter Garrett, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts has been re-kindled following his approval of mining at the Four Mile uranium mine in South Australia.  In accepting the conclusions of two independent reviews of the likely environ...

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The media versus the politicians

The last two pieces on The Political Sword: Let’s leave it to Kevin and Media flounders over the Hu affair have focussed on the media handling of the Stern Hu affair.  Concluding comments in those pieces pointed to ‘...all the hype, conjecture, misinformation, and ill-conside...

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Let’s leave it to Kevin

What a week of predictions, ponderous opinions, shrill warnings and learned views we have had from Australia’s media about the Stern Hu affair.  Let’s chronicle them, and in the interest of reasonable brevity, let’s confine ourselves mainly to what has appeared in The Austra...

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Media flounders over the Hu affair

Those who seek to understand the intricacies of the Hu affair and its implications for this nation could be excused for being cynical and disappointed at the media’s efforts to inform us.  It has floundered around with little purpose, insight or even native intelligence.  Its cravi...

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Turnbull in a China shop

We’re halfway through the Rudd Government’s first term, but if rumour becomes reality the next election may be just nine months away, in March 2010.  Then electors will have to decide whether to give Kevin Rudd, his ministers and his parliamentary team another term or, assuming no...

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Site upgrade - more one-stop blogsites

The Political Sword has been upgraded with additions to the items under site pages in the right panel.  These include Blog Watch, Sword Watch, Liberal Watch, Nationals Watch and Greens Watch. [more] Blog Watch is a feature that facilitates access to a wide variety of Australian politica...

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Media wars – where does the blogger fit?

There has been much angst exhibited in recent weeks by newspaper executives, editors and journalists about the future of newspapers and the evolution of online news content and opinion.  In his speech to the National Press Club The Future of Journalism on July 1, John Hartigan, CEO of Ne...

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The PM to the media – I have a message for you

Three weeks ago you, the media, took a satirical swipe at me on The Political Sword in The media to the PM – we have a problem.  Let me now return the compliment. You began: “Prime Minister.  Listen carefully.  The media is powerful, very powerful.  Our journa...

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Will the Coalition ever learn?

The Coalition is close to a black hole, and if it doesn’t change course, it will be sucked in.  If it had any doubt about whether its behaviour and that of its leader were being observed by the voters, that should now be dispelled after this week’s polling.  That such a rapid...

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Don’t blame me

Open letter to the people of Australia There have been a lot of nasty things said about me this last week, so unjust, so scurrilous.  You’d expect the Government to indulge in gutter politics, they’re Labor after all, but for journalists and even some of my Coalition colleag...

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Diagnosing cronyism

Cronyism refers to giving appointments of authority on the basis of friendship, or in this country mateship, regardless of qualifications, rather than through the practice and principles of meritocracy.  So to accuse Labor, and in particular Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan of cronyism over the OzCa...

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