Get the inside track on the media and government

Welcome to The Political Sword blog

This is the first posting of The Political Sword blog. Its focus is Australian politics.It is intended to give expression to those who have opinions about contemporary political events.  In particular it will provide a forum for exposing deception among politicians, bureaucrats and commentators. 

The people deserve to know the truth about political decisions, how and why they were made, and about those who made them.  They are entitled to know if political commentators are truthfully representing the situations they are reporting, and that they make clear what is fact, and what is opinion.  They owe it to their readers to validate the facts they report and reveal their source. 

By challenging politicians and commentators to stick to the truth and to justify their words and actions, it is possible that the quality of political discourse in this country might improve. The Internet provides ordinary citizens with the opportunity to influence political behaviour between elections, rather than only at election time. 

Politicians, journalists and academics read political blogs - they are bound to be influenced by them, at least to some extent.

Al Gore said that political blogs have become a significant new force in political debate and decision making in the US.  The same opportunity exists in this country to put politicians and commentators to the verbal political sword.

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 word...

  • 19/12/2022

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. According to the theory President John F. Kenne...

  • 12/12/2022

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 Scientolo...

  • 5/12/2022

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 you liste...

  • 28/11/2022

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. Joyce's pay increase for t...

  • 21/11/2022

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 p...

  • 14/11/2022

The good economic units

Wellbeing and politics have collided in the past couple of weeks. Federal Treasurer Dr Jim Chalmers has started a conversation about measuring the ‘wellbeing’ of the nation as a result of the measures in the budget. The Opposition, as you would expect, has poured scorn on the idea. On a purely lo...

  • 7/11/2022

Do you want to smile or frown

Recently, in what could be described as an epic fail in recruiting practices, the Essendon Football Club hired and accepted the resignation of the same CEO within a day. The issue was that the CEO was also the Chairman of ‘City on the Hill’, a church that seems to promote some conservative views on ...

  • 2/11/2022

We can do it better

It was probably co-incidental that the Australian Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was held in Sydney around the time the NRL and AFL finals were occurring. CPAC originally advertised the conference would be at Luna Park — until Luna Park claimed they had never had a booking. The Conf...

  • 24/10/2022

The voice

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong recently addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Accompanying Wong on the trip was Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen and ‘Special Envoy for Reconciliation’ Pat Dodson. Wong told the General Assembly that Australia believed the UN an...

  • 17/10/2022

Kicking climate down the road

You’re probably aware of some who don't see the need to reduce emissions. They have a lot of different reasons or excuses for the position, including the current systems have served us well in the past, we’re only a small population so our changes won’t mean much or just a general reluctance to cons...

  • 10/10/2022

A home amongst the gumtrees

A local real estate agent rings me every couple of months asking if I am willing to sell my house. So far he's tried the 'look how much you could get' strategy, 'the market is moving, you don’t want to miss out’ strategy and telling me he could help me buy another house if I did sell; to which my re...

  • 3/10/2022

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Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Albert Einstein

Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons.

Walt Whitman

Behind every successful man is a proud wife and a surprised mother-in-law.

Hubert H. Humphrey

All newspaper and journalistic activity is an intellectual brothel from which there is no retreat.

Leo Tolstoy

It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

Oliver Wendell Holmes