Political Comment
Political Comment
Opinion: Lettuce end food shortages!
Whoever would have thought we’d need to pay $10 for a lettuce in a supermarket? This is a real sign of the times.
Political Comment
Opinion: What a Dutton might say, and did…
'At a recent gathering, I murmured something faintly conservative, and quick as a flash I was called a "Dutton"...'
Political Comment
Opinion: Where’s the action on public housing?
Housing affordability was a prominent issue the recent election, but...the 148,000 households on the public housing waiting list nationwide have bascially been forgotten.
Political Comment
Political comment: Running for cover
David Lowe - 19
The phoney campaign is over and Australia will go to the polls on 21 May. Can the ALP get over the line? Will Anthony Albanese's old-fashioned John Curtin glasses and new-fashioned waistline cut it?
Political Comment
The long and contested road to change
On the eve of the annual Masters golf event, I sat and watched the induction of Tiger Woods into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Political Comment
Comment: Residential Tenancies and the Flood
I reckon there are some lovely landlords out there, working well with their tenants in a cooperative fashion – waiving the rent during non-occupation, writing references for alternatives, and speedily launching into repairs to get everything back to square one ASAP... I'm just not seeing them.
Political Comment
The Lord and that ‘dance’
Two things happened during the last week that perfectly illustrate the federal government’s position on religious discrimination in Australia.
Political Comment
Opinion: Scott Morrison, a former middle manager, is a genius
Who knew that our Prime Minister was such a fan of Joseph Heller?
Political Comment
Family and personal violence – the law plays catch up
How can it be that the response of the Prime Minister’s office to an allegation of rape in parliament house was to background journalists negatively about her partner? And that this bullying and re-victimising of the victim did not excite, at the very least, a police or judicial inquiry?
Political Comment
We made them do it
There was a moment during Simon Birmingham's interview on the ABC’s Insiders on Sunday which really laid bare the impressive gall of the federal government.
Political Comment
Child abuse – the abandonment of compassion
A recent discovery in Canada graphically exposes the extent to which ‘advanced civilisations’ have gone, and indeed continue to go, in the name of imagined racial superiority and cultural imperialism.
Political Comment
Acting Prime Ministers
David Lowe - 4
Last week, Acting PM Michael McCormack managed the tricky feat of making the absent Scott Morrison look good, at least by comparison. Perhaps that's now the Nationals' role in the Canberra circus?
Political Comment
Who dobs on the dobbers?
Back in August 2016 – oh, it was a different time! – treasurer Scott Morrison was talking about Australia being a nation of ‘the taxed and the taxed-nots’'…
Political Comment
Anyone remember ‘Modern Liberals’?
Anyone remember ‘Modern Liberals’? They’re the ones who stood at the last election in safe Liberal seats like Goldstein in Melbourne (Tim Wilson) and the formerly safe Liberal seat of Wentworth in Sydney (Dave Sharma).
Political Comment
Miracles left, right and centre?
David Lowe - 9
It's emerged Scott Morrison had used a taxpayer-funded VIP jet to attend a Pentecostal conference on the Gold Coast.
Political Comment
Spiritual Fatigue – the undiagnosed chronic disease and Aboriginal deaths in custody
Spiritual fatigue, in very broad terms, is a debilitating consequence of having to either constantly struggle for human rights and freedoms or being forced to constantly defend them. There is no room for celebration and purposeful meaning in this paradigm – it is simply a choice between struggle or defence.
Political Comment
No accountability for proven police misconduct
On Australia Day in 1998, I was the legal observer for the ‘Nude Ain’t Rude’ rally at Belongil Beach.
Political Comment
Where announcements masquerade as action
The great secret about government in Australia is this: no-one wants to know about government in Australia.
Political Comment
Character test for PM without much
Over Easter I visited a friend who’s spent decades doing her best to protect old growth forests, preserve human connection with nature in the raw and help save our planet from the climate emergency.
Political Comment
Submissions for the prosecution
Your honours, it is my respectful submission that you would find the Commissioner of Corrective Services and the Minister for Corrections guilty of the manslaughter of the victim, a First Nations prisoner who hanged herself in custody
Political Comment
The politics of demonising mental health
For years now, Australians have been told to be honest about their mental health: to openly seek help, to be unashamed about having discussions with employers and family about their struggles, and to fight the damaging, hurtful stigma around a common human experience.
Political Comment
Where does a lack of empathy lead us?
Democracy, as a concept and a form of governance, was first introduced by the Greeks around 507 BC.
Political Comment
The strategic myth of the job snob
Why do MPs keep telling the unemployed to move to the regions? Because they know they can’t.
Political Comment
Make Politics Boring Again
The new year is still looking awfully like 2020 Part II: The Suckening.
Political Comment
Corruption? Let’s remind ourselves of Joh
As a Brisbane teenager in Sir Joh’s stifling, authoritarian, corrupt police state, I’d buy a Nation Review each week to read Mungo on federal politics.
Political Comment
NSW Libs, Nats and Labor ignore experts on drug law reform
By lunchtime on December 2, 2020 word on the street and online was that the Berejiklian government had bitten the bullet and was about to make a ‘big announcement’ on drug law reform in the wake of the Ice Inquiry.
Political Comment
When politicians attack democracy
Attempting to step into the mighty flippers of the great Mungo MacCallum is a challenge for anyone who dares swim in the murky, pungent waters of Australian politics.
Political Comment
Political comment: Welcome to summer
David Lowe - 11
In the week when Australia’s greatest political observer Mungo MacCallum put down his pen, it would have been nice if the nation’s politicians had given up their shenanigans momentarily, out of respect. Alas, it was not to be.
Local News
Have your say on aged care facility in Kingscliff
The developers of new $150 million redevelopment ‘designed to meet the growing and evolving needs of seniors in the region’, are inviting Kingscliff residents to take part in community consultation.
Byron Echo
Fuel stolen from farmer
Aslan Shand - 0
The cost of fuel continues to be a major consideration in the budget, particularly in country areas where distances travelled are inevitably further for your average daily needs like accessing shops, schools and other activities.
Byron Echo
Developer proposes light industrial in Federal
Paul Bibby - 0
Tasteful, reasonable and useful? Or noisy, oversized and intrusive? This is the question at the heart of the debate over a light industrial development that has been proposed for the heart of Federal.
Local News
‘We’re back!’ Homecoming for The Channon market
Eve Jeffery - 0
The reverberations of the February and March floods reached beyond things most people expected – one of those things was the state of Coronation Park at The Channon where every second Sunday of the month one of the biggest and best markets on the Far North Coast is held.
