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Showing posts from August, 2009

The press gallery herd has stampeded

Julia Gillard is no longer an untouchable. On Saturday the lads and lasses of the press gallery declared an end to her protected status. It was if there had been a meeting of the columnist’s collective to reach an agreed position. Julia Gillard  — from Teflon coating to feet of clay?  wrote Laurie Oakes in the  Brisbane Courier Mail  and the other News Limited tabloids. This long time herd leader found that suddenly the Deputy Prime Minister’s competence is being questioned. Two other veterans in Saturday columns were on the same track if not as pointed in their criticism. Stimulus an item of faith  Paul Kelly called it in  The Australian, writing that the Rudd government’s $42 billion fiscal stimulus has now been exposed for its inefficiencies, cost overruns and lack of “value-for-money” — largely failings of the Gillard education package. The headline  Come election day, Rudd and co may get a lesson in the folly of self-aggrandisement  above Tony Wright’s commentary in the  Melbo

I interrupt this trip to London to bring you news from home …

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It was understandable when South Australian Premier Mike Rann interrupted his tour of UK defence establishments to have a Guinness in Ireland with cyclist Lance Armstrong. Getting the seve- time Tour de France winner back to Adelaide to lead his own new Radio Shack team in a race around the roads of South Australia is by way of being something of a public relations coup. If a small part of the Armstrong price was to leave the company of the merchants of military death to join his friend Lance, perhaps the world’s most famous cancer survivor, in addressing Dublin’s  Livestrong Global Cancer Summit  then so be it. Being a Premier concerned with finding cancer treatments fits in every bit as well with an electoral image as does a man racing around the world to drum up defence jobs and next year’s state election will be within a couple of months of the Tour Down Under ending. What was a surprise, however, was the way that the next day, when back in London under the guidance of his hos

One to watch

It did not make the front this morning but watch this one progress to page one as the game of industrial bluff brings us closer to the last Saturday in September. Security guards win right to strike on AFL Grand Final day  —  Herald Sun this morning . Imagine the hysteria of a headline saying “Grand Final may be off”.

A funeral of solemnity and quiet pageantry

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Kennedy funeral marked by solemnity and quiet pageantry - Boston Globe Taylor sings tribute to Kennedy - At the close of his Thursday night show at Tanglewood, singer James Taylor paused to deliver a heartfelt remembrance of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy. He told the packed house that Kennedy, a former trustee of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was an ardent fan of the music at Tanglewood and was instrumental in helping the BSO develop Seiji Ozawa Hall. His remarks were a brief segue into “Shed a Little Light,” a song about Martin Luther King written in the early 1970s that was included in a recent CD commemorating Barack Obama’s inauguration - Boston Globe website SUNDAY MORNING’S FRONT PAGES POLITICS AND ECONOMICS Australia Bushfires Brumby embraces fire reforms - The Brumby Government will tomorrow announce its decision to accept all 51 of the Bushfire Royal Commission’s recommendations, legislating this year to make neighbourhood ”safer places” compulsory in fire-prone areas