UNTIL recently I was never attracted to the idea of a Bill of Rights to “guarantee” our basic freedoms, including the freedom of speech. The antics of the Queensland Division of the Liberal Party in threatening to expel any member who dared criticise it, notwithstanding the merit of the criticism, got me thinking. But the […]

The fuse President Bush stuck into the Middle East powder keg and lit with the invasion of Iraq has suddenly started burning a lot faster. Along with the start of the second phase of the Iraq war, Ariel Sharon’s latest moves to effect an endgame in Israel guarantee interesting times ahead. Sharon, like Bush, prefers […]

I recently wrote a piece for ‘OnLine Opinion’ criticising various aspects of our parliamentary practice, among other things. One of the points I made is that there are too many lawyers in parliament and parliament operates too much like a courtroom. The fundamentally legalistic nature of parliament hit me one day when I was watching […]

Even the pro-Bush US media, such as Fox News, is having difficulty disguising the reality that the Bush Presidency is in desperate political trouble. The recent signs of economic improvement, including the hitherto depressing jobs outlook, have not lifted President Bush’s re-election prospects. Perhaps even more significantly, nor has the “flip flop” policy stances of […]

It was another bizarre performance by George W Bush when he gave one of his rare live speeches to explain what the hell was going on in Iraq and maybe even something about the 911 commission. Or that seemed to be the idea, anyway. What he actually did was read the lines off prepared notes […]

I’ve been thinking about time for one of my coming books. Like so many genuinely important things, we pay very little attention to it in our modern society. There just isn’t enough time… Before we invented the idea of continuous, linear time, human societies tended to think in terms of time cycles. Interestingly, one of […]

In promoting an event that objectifies women and mixes football culture with young men and alcohol, the Broncos fumbled rather than scored. As some boys look up to rugby league players, it behooves teams like the Broncos to make a greater effort towards encouraging real equality than chucking a few prizes at one woman.

THE unprecedented publicity Passion of the Christ has given to the Easter story provides a unique opportunity for the Christian churches to use this Easter to begin the reversal of the worrying decline in attendances, and, with few exceptions, church membership. But how many of our churches, and our church leaders, will take up this […]

It wasn’t good reportage but it was probably accurate commentary, when the AM reporter said this morning that the latest Newspoll (reported in The Australian) shows that the Mark Latham’s satisfaction rating as Opposition Leader has “peaked”. There’s been a 14 point fall in Latham’s satisfaction rating as well as a 5 point fall in […]

The ABC carried a news report today that Bill Gates is no longer the richest man in the world. He has been overtaken by Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea. Kamprad is worth $70 Billion Australian and Gates only $62. Remember when Abba was the biggest export earner for Sweden? Volvo was always rated up […]