In the politically, socially, and internationally turbulent landscape of 1970s Australia, two figures dominated the national stage: Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser. This article marks the beginning of a seven-part series exploring how these leaders envisioned and enacted transformative change. Drawing primarily from their election speeches — sourced from the
Government expenditure on consulting services can be reviewed under existing processes without the need for a new committee, according to former public service commissioner Andrew Podger. Podger’s submission is in response to a committee inquiry by the financial and public administration committee looking at whether a committee into procurement proposed
More than 31% of public servants are planning to look for their next job in the next six months, according to The Mandarin’s reader survey of public sector employees. The insight was one of several questions put to public servants in the ‘Frank and Fearless’ survey for 2025. More than
Former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill will replace Stephen Smith as Australia’s most senior representative in the United Kingdom. Weatherill will commence his new role next year, with a clear mission to advance Australia’s national interests and the trilateral AUKUS partnership. On Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced Weatherill’s ...
The NSW state government has stumped up $800,000 for the budget of its corruption watchdog to deal with what it describes as a “steady rise” in corruption inquiries. Treasurer Daniel Mookhey announced the additional resourcing over the weekend, flagging that it would help ICAC establish an extra investigations team and
Last week I was fortunate to be invited as a panel guest for the 2025 Australians for Constitutional Monarchy National Conference run by Professor David Flint.
It was, partly, a conversation about how the dismissal of Gough Whitlam is perceived 50 years on. Former Prime Minister John Howard reminisced with his first-hand experience of the dismissal, ...
You know you’re not a proper political party, until you’ve had the obligatory youth wing scandal. Pubescent politicos have long been a feature of Westminster life. In the Starmer army they have NOLS – National Labour Students, where generations of power-crazed identikit drones have been churned out, each bearing the same dead eyes and rictus grin. The ...
Anthony Albanese has denounced Gough Whitlam’s dismissal from office in 1975 as “a calculated plot, hatched by conservative forces which sacrificed conventions and institutions in the pursuit of power”. Albanese said the election that followed – won by Malcolm Fraser in a landslide – did “not wash any of that
As Washington rolls out the red carpet today for the former al-Qaeda chieftain and now Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s minorities continue to live in terror. An army of destruction, half Mad Max, half Lollapalooza is rolling through the desert somewhere south of the country’s capital, Damascus. Who has ordered these militants into action? No ...
Another Director-General bites the dust. And the number two with him. What a facepalm. What a honking, stupid, first-day-in-the office sort of error to make. What cost Tim Davie his job, and presents the BBC with its latest existential crisis, was not just an error: it was an unforced error of the most wince-making kind.
Defenders of the BBC regard ...
I’m not going to rehash here the details of the memorandum by Michael Prescott, the former independent editorial standards adviser to the BBC, which has now led to the resignations of both Tim Davie, director-general, and Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News. You’d have to have been in a cave for the past week – or, perhaps, watching BBC News – not to know ...
The resignations of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness over dishonest editing of a speech in 2021 by US President Donald Trump raise several disturbing questions. These concern the effectiveness and integrity of the BBC’s internal editorial procedures for investigating complaints, and the pressure being
In the politically, socially, and internationally turbulent landscape of 1970s Australia, two figures dominated the national stage: Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser. This article marks the beginning of a seven-part series exploring how these leaders envisioned and enacted transformative change. Drawing primarily from their election speeches — sourced from the
Government expenditure on consulting services can be reviewed under existing processes without the need for a new committee, according to former public service commissioner Andrew Podger. Podger’s submission is in response to a committee inquiry by the financial and public administration committee looking at whether a committee into procurement proposed
More than 31% of public servants are planning to look for their next job in the next six months, according to The Mandarin’s reader survey of public sector employees. The insight was one of several questions put to public servants in the ‘Frank and Fearless’ survey for 2025. More than
Former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill will replace Stephen Smith as Australia’s most senior representative in the United Kingdom. Weatherill will commence his new role next year, with a clear mission to advance Australia’s national interests and the trilateral AUKUS partnership. On Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced Weatherill’s ...
The NSW state government has stumped up $800,000 for the budget of its corruption watchdog to deal with what it describes as a “steady rise” in corruption inquiries. Treasurer Daniel Mookhey announced the additional resourcing over the weekend, flagging that it would help ICAC establish an extra investigations team and
Last week I was fortunate to be invited as a panel guest for the 2025 Australians for Constitutional Monarchy National Conference run by Professor David Flint.
It was, partly, a conversation about how the dismissal of Gough Whitlam is perceived 50 years on. Former Prime Minister John Howard reminisced with his first-hand experience of the dismissal, ...
You know you’re not a proper political party, until you’ve had the obligatory youth wing scandal. Pubescent politicos have long been a feature of Westminster life. In the Starmer army they have NOLS – National Labour Students, where generations of power-crazed identikit drones have been churned out, each bearing the same dead eyes and rictus grin. The ...
Anthony Albanese has denounced Gough Whitlam’s dismissal from office in 1975 as “a calculated plot, hatched by conservative forces which sacrificed conventions and institutions in the pursuit of power”. Albanese said the election that followed – won by Malcolm Fraser in a landslide – did “not wash any of that
As Washington rolls out the red carpet today for the former al-Qaeda chieftain and now Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s minorities continue to live in terror. An army of destruction, half Mad Max, half Lollapalooza is rolling through the desert somewhere south of the country’s capital, Damascus. Who has ordered these militants into action? No ...
Another Director-General bites the dust. And the number two with him. What a facepalm. What a honking, stupid, first-day-in-the office sort of error to make. What cost Tim Davie his job, and presents the BBC with its latest existential crisis, was not just an error: it was an unforced error of the most wince-making kind.
Defenders of the BBC regard ...
I’m not going to rehash here the details of the memorandum by Michael Prescott, the former independent editorial standards adviser to the BBC, which has now led to the resignations of both Tim Davie, director-general, and Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News. You’d have to have been in a cave for the past week – or, perhaps, watching BBC News – not to know ...
The resignations of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness over dishonest editing of a speech in 2021 by US President Donald Trump raise several disturbing questions. These concern the effectiveness and integrity of the BBC’s internal editorial procedures for investigating complaints, and the pressure being
