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I posted my first essay on this website on 16 July 2012. Why did I start it? Because I liked writing analysis and commentaries, and after the GFC in 2009 newspapers and magazines shed staff as though they all had some dread disease. Paying for outsiders like me was out of the question. My first essay, way back, was at the beginning of 1968, and was a request to the Liberals to choose Paul Hasluck as leader. That was an editorial in The Canberra Times, unsigned of course. Alas the Liberals took no notice, and selected John Gorton. I had…

One of my correspondents, who has been a research biologist and a senior Treasury official in Queensland, sent me a set of notes on the subject of better ways of dealing with the quarantine issue. I was so struck with them I asked could I publish an edited version, to which he agreed. I have only published a few such pieces since the website started in 2012. My guest is Dr Paul McFadyen.   A new way forward Quarantine in commercial hotels in major cities has demonstrably failed, with four outbreaks in four states. Covid 19 restrictions have also severely…

In a few weeks will we pass the moment where, in 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations agreed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It had earlier been announced by Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his fourth term as President of the United States of America. No subsequent President has served for more than two terms, because a constitutional change limited later presidents to a maximum of two terms. Eleanor Roosevelt was an important woman of her time, and we have just passed the anniversary of the moment where she declared the Declaration…

Over the past few months I have become more and more aware of, interested even, in what passes for advertising on our commercial TV channels, and on the SBS as well. I don’t watch the ABC much, and have nothing to offer there. I look after my wife in the afternoons, and she will watch TV if there’s nothing else happening, and she likes a set of programs that I am happy to watch as well. I need to declare an interest. Some of my family are involved in commercial TV, and point out to me that my criticisms of…

I was asked some months ago to write something about the US Presidential elections, coming in just a few weeks. This is the first instalment. For those who have lived in both countries, it is pretty basic stuff. But just as there are millions of Americans who simply don’t know that Australia exists, or think it is Austria, there are hundreds of thousands of Australians who think we are just like America. We’re not, and this essay gives some context. Yes, we have a common language, we borrowed their federal system from the US, and a few other things as…