There’s consternation in the Queensland Liberal Party that President Warwick Parer is even having informal talks with the National Party about amalgamating the parties, and very senior office-bearers want him to back-off now. Local Brisbane media have been carrying the Nationals’ version of the story, complete with the incorrect claim that attempts at merger 18 […]

I was too young to be paying much attention when Clem Jones was Lord Mayor of Brisbane, but I do remember some things. Some of the members of my mother’s deeply conservative North Queensland family voted for him, much to mum’s consternation. They would only have done this because he was non-ideological, and he got […]

The Liberal Party always talks about restructure when it loses an election. This generally has little to do with actual reform, but rather tipping the field so that your enemies are at a disadvantage. When John Moore took control of the Queensland Liberals after the 1983 losses he set about radically changing the structure, merging […]

Peter Beattie, who once hounded a governor-general from office because he didn’t show enough empathy with victims of paedophilia, can’t even say sorry for the disgraceful treatment of a young Aurukun girl which occurred while he was Premier. In a speech to the Fabian Society in Sydney he blamed everyone but himself for what happened […]

Warwick Parer, and others, have been referring to a supposed convention that a spill motion must be accepted as carried by the chair of a parliamentary party meeting when the vote is in fact even. While this seems unlikely, it has been uncritically accepted by a number of commentators. David Fraser is an expert on […]

This is the text of a media statement made this afternoon: This afternoon I am informed that the Queensland Liberal Party State Council purported to expel me from the party of which I have been a member for over 30 years. This decision has not been properly arrived at, as stated in a letter from […]

The decision to flouridate Queensland’s water supply gives Premier Anna Bligh a signature achievement that should easily define her premiership for generations to come. Former Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Clem Jones, is most remembered for sewering Brisbane. Former Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen had the street marches and being tried for corruption, but is also identified with […]

I love the way climate scientists like to make predictions rather than measurements. Halfway through this year I read a report in the Adelaide Advertiser that 2007 was going to be the hottest year ever. Now Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia, one of the alarmists in the debate, has predicted in Oslo, […]

It’s fascinating how lies infect one organ in the media, and then get transmitted on. Here’s one that first invaded The Courier Mail and then spread around both the mainstream and alternate media. If you believe The Courier Mail, the current deadlock in the Queensland parliamentary Liberal party could have been avoided. In an article […]