Einstein pictured the world with four dimensions – width, height, depth and time – producing the possibilities of going backward and forward in time, just as we go up and down in space. St Augustine reconciled freewill to predestination by envisaging a God who sat outside time and knew what we would do because from […]

Last federal election was all about those Australians who had started voting One Nation in the 1998 election. It appears this federal election is all about voters who live in Western Sydney, or at least that is my tentative conclusion from last night’s budget. There is a predictable rhythm to national economic management. The first […]

Last night I decided to watch the Treasurer’s budget speech, rather than go to the Treasury website and download the documents I was interested in. After a 30 minute rushed speech by Peter Costello, I was not much the wiser. Instead of being the “Report to the Nation on the Government’s Stewardship of the Economy” […]

THE Australian electorate has a well deserved, and practised, reputation for dealing swiftly with governments, politicians and political parties who treat it with arrogance and contempt. Judging by the comments over the weekend from Senators Brandis and Mason, among others, there remain some politicians who have yet to get the electorate’s message. The presumption contained […]

Sunday’s recent reports into age-related infertility have got me convinced my thirty-something-year-old eggs aren’t fit to make a rubbery omelette, let alone a little me. While I could admit some guilt for allowing myself to rundown rather than reproduce, I prefer, like the ABC’s Virginia Haussegger, to blame mums, the feminist variety this time, because […]

Graham you argue cleverly but I wonder if not overly so. There is a forest out there in the world of Sydney broadcasting but you seem determined to see only individual trees and even worse, parts of trees. What the Jones, Laws & Howard affair all points to is the dire state of public discourse […]

Maybe I am reading this incorrectly, but I sensed relief in the media when it was determined that the bombs that exploded in Athens were from locals, not Al Qaeda, as though this should somehow matter. The other night Phillip Adams had three experts on Late Night Live who argued that Al Qaeda didn’t really […]

My fellow blogger Graham Young totally misses the point in his “defence” of the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) Chairman, Professor David Flint. To illustrate what the real issue is in this matter, I need to go back to an experience in my career as a Ministerial Advisor – 30 years ago. At the time, I […]

My fellow blogger Jeff Wall has now posted twice calling on Professor David Flint to step down. While I think that David has made some mistakes, I am not sure that any of them are punishable by public humiliation and then execution.

THE fact that Professor David Flint has an elevated view of his own importance, and integrity, has no doubt contributed to his determination to hang on to his position as Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority. The Professor may not know this, but the longer he hangs on in the face of overwhelming evidence that […]