Labor Shocker!
:: Posted 18 May 2019, by Zak de Courcy ::

I’m bloody angry because this was the most important election in our lifetime and you wouldn’t have bloody known it. The Labor party didn’t hammer that home. This was the election that Labor should never have even come close to losing and if they do, and I think they have, they’ve got some very serious soul searching to do and some serious arsekicking to do.

This was the worst Labor campaign I’ve seen in 25 years…

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:: Posted in Australian Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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Vote For A Future!
:: Posted 18 May 2019, by Zak de Courcy ::

I firmly believe that there are many Liberal MPs who will be privately relieved if a Shorten Labor government is elected. I believe that many of them would be glad to be rid of the albatross of Abbott’s legacy of Climate Change denial; energy policy civil wars; denigration of people on income support; attacks on wage earners via cruel cuts to penalty rates; barely concealed racism; and unsustainable welfare subsidies for the relatively wealthy, like Negative Gearing and Franking Credits.

If I hadn’t heard a Liberal senator say something akin to that to me 40 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it possible. My friend the Liberal senator, provided me with the proof that politicians quite often say one thing while firmly believing the opposite.

Help relieve the tortured souls of fair minded Liberal MPs who have a social conscience and are not Peter Dutton, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and their like, and…

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:: Posted in Australian Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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Vale Bob Hawke
:: Posted 17 May 2019, by Zak de Courcy ::

Yesterday, Australia lost one of its giants, Bob Hawke, our country’s 23rd prime minister. He served in that office from 1983 to 1991, an eight year span that enchanted, at times transfixed, and ultimately transformed this country.

It’s hard in 2019 to convey how omnipresent Bob Hawke was in the life of Australia from the late 1960s right through to the 1990s. No one before or since has had such a profound impact on this country. In 1970 he was the most popular and respected person in the country and by 1984 he had also become the most popular prime minister in history with sustained approval at an astonishing 75%. No one has come close since.

I don’t have any great insight into his life but I would like to relate my brief impression of him…

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:: Posted in Australian Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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Australia Days…
:: Posted 11 January 2017, by Zak de Courcy ::

I know that there is significant and understandable disquiet with the current Australia Day, January 26, a celebration day that might feel like it’s been around forever but hasn’t…
Of course indigenous Australians are reminded every year that their country (or rather, the colony of New South Wales) was annexed by Governor Arthur Phillip for Britain on that colonisation date….

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:: Posted in Australian Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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Let the Bloodbath Begin!
:: Posted 31 January 2015, by Zak de Courcy ::

Question to Jane Prentice, federal Liberal member for Ryan (in Queensland): “Is Tony Abbott the man to lead the Liberals to the next federal election?”
Her answer: “Well that’s the discussion, isn’t it. We need to look at where we’re going…”

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:: Posted in Australian Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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Tony’s Night of the Long Knives Beckons
:: Posted 30 January 2015, by Zak de Courcy ::

A certain foreign minister recently dined with the svengali of Australian politics, Rupert Murdoch. Why is that significant? Because, Murdoch doesn’t do these things just to be ‘sociable‘….

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:: Posted in Australian Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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Vale Gough Whitlam
:: Posted 21 October 2014, by Zak de Courcy ::

Gough Whitlam was the giant of Australian life who I admired the most. More than that, for a short period of 4 years (1981-85), he allowed me to be his friend. He must have known I was in awe of him (which, don’t worry his large ego didn’t mind) but he had a knack of making me feel his equal even though he was 40 years older than I and so far ahead of my fledgling 24 year-old knowledge. Even though our conversations were very eclectic, ranging across politics, history, art, music, the cosmos and our lives, he allowed me to feel that I wasn’t out of my depth except when he’d occasionally pepper his sentences with classical Greek and Latin which would remind me just how broad the gulf really was.

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:: Posted in Australian Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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Run Mr. Rabbit!
:: Posted 26 June 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::

Tony Abbott’s body language at tonight’s press conference (where unusually, he answered questions) suggested that he’s worried that he’s got a fight on his hands. I think he hoped some of the independents would desert Labor by supporting a no-confidence motion tomorrow to hasten the election and bring forward his Liberal Party’s resumption of their ‘right to rule’.

It seems the cat’s out of the bag… he knows he doesn’t have the numbers.

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:: Posted in Australian Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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Frack the Frackers!
:: Posted 31 May 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::

Letterman telling it like it is.
Yea, I know… where was I…
I remember when Gasland came out and it was said by industry types in Australia, that coal seam gas would be extracted in a different and much safer way than that depicted in the film. Well guess what, that was just spin…
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:: Posted in Australian Politics | Gotta Life | International Politics |

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Clive Palmer’s a Funny Bloke:
:: Posted 14 May 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::

I know Clive Palmer’s new/resurrected United Australia Party (UAP) (now Palmer United Party) is a joke but it worries me that a couple of people in Australia might buy his TV ad. line, that both the Liberal Party and Labor Party are “all run by lobbyists”…

… his self-financed Palmer United Party is in fact just such a lobby group serving the interests of only one person…
Clive Palmer…

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:: Posted in Australian Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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More on Same-Sex Marriage and the Church:
:: Posted 10 April 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::

It seems that my last post has generated a bit of heat on Facebook with comments suggesting that in 1967, when the bulk of churches stood against interracial marriage, they were simply reflecting a society with similar attitudes. The argument follows that the churches are doing the same now…
Jeffrey John, the Anglican dean of St Albans in the UK, recently accused the church of pursuing a “morally contemptible” policy on same-sex marriage…
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:: Posted in Australian Politics | International Politics | Religion |
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The Last Civil Right?
Same Sex Marriage:
:: Posted 08 April 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::

It seems that the last great Civil Rights issue is in the balance and once again, just like they did with interracial marriage in 1967, the churches stand on the side of prejudice (with a very few exceptions like the 1 million strong, United Church of Christ).

So while great strides have been made in recent decades to recognize the civil rights of the LGBT communities, there still exists one glaring inequality that defines them and their life partnerships as inferior and somehow frivolous: Marriage inequality…
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:: Posted in Australian Politics | International Politics | Religion |
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The Leaderless, Leadership Spill:
:: Posted 22 March 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::

Yesterday’s farce of a leadership challenge, did nothing to resolve the issue. The push by Regional Australia Minister, and stalwart Gillard supporter, Simon Crean to bring the issue to a head, would only have succeeded had the Prime Minister resigned. Clearly, his discussion with Julia Gillard, the night before he moved, was the proverbial tap on the shoulder from a loyal and respected colleague that tells a leader, the time is up. Julia is not a leader, it seems, who will go quietly into the night, with her dignity intact. She is a leader who appears ready to defend her castle until every bit of it, the Labor Party included, is destroyed…
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:: Posted in Australian Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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Time to Go, Julia!
:: Posted 20 March 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::
With the level of backgrounding seemingly exploding in Canberra at the moment, you’d think that the move must be on to replace Julia Gillard. The trouble is, the Prime Minister must also surely know, that a leadership challenge now would be absolutely fatal for Labor’s electoral chances and to force her colleagues into that position would be unforgivable…
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:: Posted in Australian Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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Who Said This about Climate Change?
:: Posted 13 March 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::
“First, let’s get this straight. You cannot cut emissions without a cost. To replace dirty coal fired power stations with cleaner gas fired ones, or renewables like wind, let alone nuclear power or even coal fired power with carbon capture and storage, is all going to cost money.”…
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:: Posted in Australian Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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It’s Time! or It’s Over!
:: Posted 11 March 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::
The weekend election in WA has brought the fate of federal Labor into sharp focus. Although the swing in the primary vote against Mark McGowan’s State ALP team was a little over 2%, with the collapse in the Green vote, the 2-party preferred swing of almost 7%, produced a bitter result for Labor…
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:: Posted in Australian Politics | WA Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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Shiny Objects, Beat Tube Map:
:: Posted 10 March 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::
Well it seems Colin Barnett has won the ‘Boom State’ election which pitted his grandiose vision of shiny objects against Mark McGowan’s (well really Ken Travers’) Tube Map…
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:: Posted in Australian Politics | WA Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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A Vote for Barnett is a Vote for Buswell:
:: Posted 07 March 2013, by Zak de Courcy ::
The news is quickening… It’s looking more and more like a chair sniffer for Premier in 2014…
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:: Posted in Australian Politics | WA Politics ≈ Leave a comment ::

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