Furphy falsified Sir, As usual Jeffry Babb (News Weekly, May 21, 2016) has produced a scholarly article on Arthur Calwell. However, I must dispute his belief that Jim Killen saved the Menzies government in the 1961 election. This furphy has been demolished by John Howard in chapter 13 of his The Menzies Era entitled “Saved by Santamaria”. In my review of the Howard…

Globally over 300 million young people were not in employment, education or training in 2013. A new social contract is needed to generate jobs and hope for a generation of increasingly disenfranchised young people. Edoardo Campanella, Eurozone economist at UniCredit, has recently provided a detailed overview of the global youth unemployment crisis with warnings of political and civil unrest if nation-states and global…

If you did not vote for the Greens (for example) in the last election, and do not wish to vote for the Greens this time, you need to understand how under new voting system for the Senate your vote for, say, the Liberals or the DLP could still end up a vote for the Greens. The new voting system for the…

Part of Malcolm Turnbull’s rationale for calling a double-dissolution election – the first in 29 years – was to clean out the cumbersome Senate of renegade and recalcitrant independents. Boy, am I redfaced .. or, is that, greenfaced? Hard to tell in shades of grey. Mr Turnbull, like Tony Abbott before him, was frustrated at having to negotiate with the disparate group of…

  THE LIBERTARIAN ALTERNATIVE by Chris Berg Melbourne University Press, Carlton Paperback: 277 pages Price: AUD$32.99   Reviewed by Jeffry Babb   Like the curate’s egg, most readers will find that this book is good, in parts. This phrase derives from a cartoon published in the late 19th century in the humorous magazine, Punch. A young curate is dining with…

  FAITH, IRELAND AND EMPIRE: The Life of Patrick Joseph Clune CSSR, 1864–1935, Archbishop of Perth, Western Australia by Christopher Dowd OP St Paul’s Publications, Strathfield Paperback: 371pp Price: AUD$39.95   Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel   In recent years biographies of several Australian Catholic prelates have been published. This excellent study of the life and ministry of Patrick Clune, Archbishop of Perth,…

Having read the comedic stylings of Rebecca Shaw in her lol piece on the SBS (Spitefully un-Balanced Service) website, “A day in the life of Scott Morrison if he actually faced the same bigotry as LGBTI people”, News Weekly in awe-inspired humility offers the following parody (it being the sincerest form of flattery). Jason (not his real name: his real name is Ishmael)…