Sunday February 5, 2012
Mungo MacCallum Updated January 30, 2012
About Mungo
Mungo MacCallum is a political journalist, broadcaster and commentator.
Since the 1970s and 1980s, he has covered Australian federal politics from the Canberra Press Gallery for The Australian, The National Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, Nation Review and radio station 2JJ/Triple J.
Currently he writes a column for The Byron Shire Echo, The Northern Star, and frequently writes for the magazine The Monthly and www.crikey.com.au. He also contributes political commentary to Australia's national Community Radio Network.
As an author, he has written several books, including 'Run, Johnny, Run', written after the Australian federal election in 2004. His autobiographical narrative of the Australian political scene, 'Mungo: the man who laughs' is currently in its fourth reprint. 'How To Be A Megalomaniac or, Advice to a Young Politician' was published in 2002 and 'Political Anecdotes' was published in 2003. In December 2004, Duffy & Snellgrove published 'War and Pieces: John Howard's last election'.
See Thus Spake Mungo every week on YouTube and Echonetdaily
Abbott all at sea on navy’s role By Mungo MacCallum

The first duty of sailors is to rescue those in danger, irrespective of whether they be friend or foe.Young men and women join the Royal Australian Navy for a variety of reasons: to fight for their country against its enemies, to learn a trade, to see the world, in the hope of adventure, or even to experience what Winston Churchill described as the tradition of ‘rum, sodomy and the lash&r  Read more »

Gillard lacks smarts on pokie reform By Mungo MacCallum

Against Clubs Australia’s vulnerable tirades, Gillard maintained a stubborn silence, leaving it to GetUp to mount a reply.On the door of King Charles II’s bedchamber, the Earl of Rochester, a notable wit, once pinned a note. It read:‘Here lies our sovereign lord, the KingWhose word no man relies on;He never says a foolish thingNor ever does a wise one.’ Unfortunately the  Read more »

Japan hangs tough on killing whales By Mungo MacCallum

Let’s be clear about one thing from the start: Japanese whaling is not only unnecessary and unpleasant; it is actually illegal. This is not simply because of the whaling ships’ blatant violation of declared marine sanctuaries and Australian territorial waters. It is illegal at its very core because it is based on a brazen lie. The International Whaling Commission has authorised the   Read more »

The need to reform Labor is urgent By Mungo MacCallum

The case for reforming the structure of the Labor Party is unarguable and it has been unarguable for many years.   Read more »

Another hard year ahead for Labor By Mungo MacCallum

Julia Gillard’s government is entering the new year with a kind of desperate optimism. After all, what’s the alternative? The Labor Party has to hope and believe that things can only get better. 2011 was indeed an annus horribilis, marked by ministers lurching from crisis to crisis, pausing only to occasionally shoot themselves (or sometimes each other) in the foot, and the chaos wa  Read more »

Team Julia squares up to the new year By Mungo MacCallum

Commentary on Julia Gillard’s ministerial reshuffle has tended to concentrate on the negatives – not just from the Nomadic Noman, Tony Abbott, but from more serious pundits as well. And it is true that in the short term – from here to the next Newspoll, which is the attention span of most media these days – there is not too much to commend it.   Read more »

Aunty triumphs in network stuffup By Mungo MacCallum

The result, when it was finally announced, was the right one: the ABC has been granted the right to run the Australia Network in perpetuity. Any decision to hand the channel by which our country communicates with other countries to commercial interests would have been absurd, and to give it to Sky News – partly owned by BSkyB, which is in turn controlled by Rupert Murdoch – would ha  Read more »

Labor con riles the Murdoch goons By Mungo MacCallum

Gay marriage, according to the pundits of The Australian, is a boutique issue. This must be the reason they have written about little else for the past fortnight.   Read more »

A brief history of ratting, Oz-style By Mungo MacCallum

There is an old political saying: a man who will rat once will rat twice. Obviously it has escaped Tony Abbott, or if he has heard it he assumed it only applied to Labor renegades; because Peter Slipper has form.   Read more »

Let them eat yellowcake, says Julia By Mungo MacCallum

So the powers that be in the ALP have decreed that it is time to take the all but final step in neutralising one of the party’s great divisions. By moving to sell Australian uranium to India, a country that has not and will not sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, Julia Gillard has effectively proclaimed that an issue which has plagued Labor for more that thirty years is now dead. F  Read more »