Columnists Australia

Brown study

21 September 2013 9:00 am

September 7 was the first election day I have not spent handing out how-to-vote cards since I was 15. Not…

Australian Notes

19 September 2013 1:00 pm

Will its allies around the world ever recover that confidence in the United States, which they lost with President Obama’s…

Australian notes

14 September 2013 9:00 am

Mr Putin suggests that Syria submit its chemical weapons to international control. Syria’s foreign minister thinks this is a good…

Brown study

14 September 2013 9:00 am

After we had lobbed a few atom bombs on Japan in 1945, the Emperor delivered himself of the understatement of…

Australian notes

12 September 2013 1:00 pm

Mr Putin suggests that Syria submit its chemical weapons to international control. Syria’s foreign minister thinks this is a good…

Australian notes

7 September 2013 9:00 am

They can’t help themselves. Despite the ancient warnings against counting chickens and the dreadful memory of the unlosable, but lost,…

Brown study

7 September 2013 9:00 am

As this period before an election is like the night before Christmas, it might be an appropriate time to draw…

Brown Study

31 August 2013 9:00 am

The other day I went to an unusual but worthwhile election event. The international law firm Norton Rose Fulbright had…

Australian Notes

31 August 2013 9:00 am

The Labor party has no hope of winning the election unless something extraordinary happens in the next few days. Is…

Australian Notes

24 August 2013 9:00 am

It was a great night in the Paddo RSL. It was an open-to-all public meeting to hear and question candidates…

Brown study

24 August 2013 9:00 am

Some readers have said I have been uncharacteristically quiet on Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme and want to know…

Australian Notes

17 August 2013 9:00 am

Tony Abbott won the first debate marginally on both style and issues. Neither leader was faintly inspirational let alone charismatic.…

Brown study

10 August 2013 9:00 am

Like hanging, an election concentrates the mind, at least if you are a political junkie. So I suppose it is…

Australian Notes

10 August 2013 9:00 am

While Kevin Rudd was making his way to Yarralumla last Sunday, Tony Abbott was in Sydney’s Chinatown with Julie Bishop…

Brown Study

3 August 2013 9:00 am

The economic problems of the US are substantial. The recovery is staggering along with occasional bursts of energy, but by…

Australian notes

3 August 2013 9:00 am

It was a stoic little gathering of Craig Thomson loyalists in the Celebrity Room of City Tatts in Sydney. Promoted…

Australian Notes

27 July 2013 9:00 am

More from Poor Peter’s Almanac: Kevin Rudd is disliked by all who know him but is popular on television. Tony…

Brown Study

27 July 2013 9:00 am

It was probably inevitable that my stay in the United States should coincide with another of the volcanic eruptions of…

Brown study

20 July 2013 9:00 am

 London Here, you can scarcely avoid the looming presence of the European Community. It seems that, every day, news arrives…

Australian Notes

20 July 2013 9:00 am

Anyone who believes Kevin Rudd has changed will believe anything. So says the great cartoonist Bill Leak, unloading during the…

Australian Notes

13 July 2013 9:00 am

The crowded Thanksgiving Service at St James, Kings Street, Sydney, for Charles Copeman, the mining executive who died aged 83…

Brown Study

13 July 2013 9:00 am

The first public opinion polls since the return of Kevin Rudd show that the Labor party is in with a…

Australian notes

6 July 2013 9:00 am

There’s something irresistible about a philosopher who gives his recreations in Debrett’s as ‘wine, women and song’. Ken Minogue, who died last…

Brown study

6 July 2013 9:00 am

As this is the thinking man’s column, I thought it useful to reflect on some of the wider issues emerging…

Across the aisle

27 June 2013 1:00 pm

Thousands of kilometres from the Sturm und Drang of whirling leadership speculation in Canberra, another power struggle erupts with much…