I come from a rusted-on Labor family. My father was a Labor councillor on our local council. My sister-in-law was a Labor state member. My father was a strong unionist. His hero was Bob Hawke. He fervently believed in many of the union dictums like “one man – one job”. This philosophy eschewed multiskilling and […]

The question that is inevitably asked of us these days is, “Do you believe in global warming?” Now for most of us this is indeed a question of faith because very few of us have sufficiently interrogated the science on the matter as to be sufficiently informed to be able to objectively make a rational […]

I was flicking through the Review section of the Weekend Australian the other day and I came across an article by Stan Grant titled World of Difference. The article was a critique by Grant of Tom Keneally’s novel, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith. I was most intrigued by the byline to the article which read: […]

I have often written about my dismay about indigenous disadvantage. Despite the fact that many indigenous people are prospering and contributing positively to Australian society, there is still a significant cohort experiencing undue hardship including domestic violence, poor educational outcomes, significant health issues and high levels of incarceration. An emblematic issue for indigenous people has […]

The news these last few weeks has been dominated by various sexual indiscretions allegedly committed by politicians and those close to politics in Canberra. There are many decent men and women in politics and being a politician is a demanding and testing career for both men and women. And it is easy, but wrong, to […]

Live Not By Lies Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a famous Russian dissident and author. His Gulag Archipelago exposed the depravity of Soviet totalitarianism and made him a global hero. The Russians finally expelled Solzhenitsyn and he took up residence in the United States. On the eve of his forced exile he published a final message to […]

Risk management is a relatively recent field of study. The boards of most major companies now have risk management committees charged with the responsibility of ensuring organisations are not exposed to risks that might be fatal to the company or at the very least seriously impede the company’s operation. Our propensity to deal with risk […]

Human beings always have contradictory aspirations: their will to assert their individuality conflicts with their desire to belong. And both tendencies bring inherent problems. Those who seek to emphasise their individuality and specialness develop conflated egos that hinder their ability to relate to others. The Vedantic sages understood this human flaw millennia ago. They differentiated […]

After his inauguration as US President Joe Biden took little time to signal a reversal of many of Donald Trump’s policies. There has been a virtual hurricane of activity to affirm the left-wing policies of the Democrats. As I write the incoming President has already signed off on fifty executive orders to signal his opposition […]

A major stage of human development is the passage from childhood to adulthood. In many traditions this important transition is celebrated by significant rites of passage that signify that the child has matured and must now take on the responsibility of adulthood. In modern Western societies those rites of passage are no longer, or at […]