Free Republic

TRIBUTES flowed in yesterday from around the world for Padraic "Paddy" McGuinness, a unique character in Australian life and a man who had been central to the country's cultural, journalistic and academic life for more than half a century. ..... McGuinness first came to public attention as a student activist - his ASIO file is now on the National Archives website - and was a leading light during the heady days of intellectual ferment in the late 1950s and early 60s that saw the formation of the group known as the Sydney Push. ..... "Paddy was always passionately interested in...

The revolt of the old farts. That is the best description of the statement by "a concerned group of former service chiefs and Australian diplomats" on Sunday. No longer involved with the formulation or implementation of Australian policy, and rarely if ever consulted, this group is suffering from what Gareth Evans aptly named "relevance deprivation syndrome". The world is out of joint, and no one asks them how to set it right. The statement is, in fact, based on a lie. It is a lie widely disseminated, but a lie nonetheless. This is that Australia's participation in the Iraq war...

So the Labor Party has decided to go in for another bout of bank bashing. This is a sport much beloved of the loonier elements in the party and the community generally, and it always goes well in the country. Fear of "the money power" has always been rife on the Left; and farmers and populists have always believed in the idea of cheap and unlimited credit, which is being withheld from them only by the profiteering owners of banks. It is surprising, though perhaps inevitable, that the Labor leader, Mark Latham, should have forgotten most of what he learnt...

Elections clearly do not give the results they ought to. The wrong candidates get elected, the wrong governments get formed and the wrong policies are implemented. This is obviously the case in Australia, since John Howard has won three elections and may well win a fourth, despite the fact that no right-thinking person really believes that his Government ought to be in power. Contributors to the letters pages frequently put versions of this position. How come, then, that Howard wins elections? It must be that the electorate is ignorant and ill-educated, unlike the political class which believes that only it...

Who ever imagined that the big prizewinners in the international film industry would be fat, hairy slobs? First, the New Zealander director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson, and second the American director of Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore. Of course, the great producers and directors in the past were never film star material themselves; it was always one of the defining features of Hollywood in the old days (and probably still is) that an essential element in the career path (a rung on the ladder to success, you might say) of any dewily innocent-looking ingenue was the...

It is still not certain that there will be a federal election this year, nor that John Howard will be contesting it. Despite the undisguised glee among the anti-Howard brigade, nor is it at all sure that Mark Latham will be looking like a winner at the next election. It is true that he has brought a welcome fresh face to the leadership of the Opposition and might prove to be a future Labor prime minister, but he has yet to prove either his staying power, his stability or his self-control. Certainly, too, Latham has been an enormous morale booster...

It is going to be a bad year for responsible political and economic management at the federal level. All parties, major and minor, are in election mode. As usual this will involve all kinds of promises and bribes for votes, and the appeasement of noisy pressure groups which might conceivably influence the outcome; as well it will deter the Government from implementing policy measures which may alienate or inflict pain on anyone, regardless of merit. The Opposition, always tempted to irresponsibility, will do its best to embarrass or blame the Government for decisions which it knows are good and necessary,...