Columnists Australia
Brown study
September 7 was the first election day I have not spent handing out how-to-vote cards since I was 15. Not…
Australian Notes
Will its allies around the world ever recover that confidence in the United States, which they lost with President Obama’s…
Australian notes
Mr Putin suggests that Syria submit its chemical weapons to international control. Syria’s foreign minister thinks this is a good…
Brown study
After we had lobbed a few atom bombs on Japan in 1945, the Emperor delivered himself of the understatement of…
Australian notes
Mr Putin suggests that Syria submit its chemical weapons to international control. Syria’s foreign minister thinks this is a good…
Australian notes
They can’t help themselves. Despite the ancient warnings against counting chickens and the dreadful memory of the unlosable, but lost,…
Brown study
As this period before an election is like the night before Christmas, it might be an appropriate time to draw…
Brown Study
The other day I went to an unusual but worthwhile election event. The international law firm Norton Rose Fulbright had…
Australian Notes
The Labor party has no hope of winning the election unless something extraordinary happens in the next few days. Is…
Australian Notes
It was a great night in the Paddo RSL. It was an open-to-all public meeting to hear and question candidates…
Brown study
Some readers have said I have been uncharacteristically quiet on Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme and want to know…
Australian Notes
Tony Abbott won the first debate marginally on both style and issues. Neither leader was faintly inspirational let alone charismatic.…
Brown study
Like hanging, an election concentrates the mind, at least if you are a political junkie. So I suppose it is…
Australian Notes
While Kevin Rudd was making his way to Yarralumla last Sunday, Tony Abbott was in Sydney’s Chinatown with Julie Bishop…
Brown Study
The economic problems of the US are substantial. The recovery is staggering along with occasional bursts of energy, but by…
Australian notes
It was a stoic little gathering of Craig Thomson loyalists in the Celebrity Room of City Tatts in Sydney. Promoted…
Australian Notes
More from Poor Peter’s Almanac: Kevin Rudd is disliked by all who know him but is popular on television. Tony…
Brown Study
It was probably inevitable that my stay in the United States should coincide with another of the volcanic eruptions of…
Brown study
London Here, you can scarcely avoid the looming presence of the European Community. It seems that, every day, news arrives…
Australian Notes
Anyone who believes Kevin Rudd has changed will believe anything. So says the great cartoonist Bill Leak, unloading during the…
Australian Notes
The crowded Thanksgiving Service at St James, Kings Street, Sydney, for Charles Copeman, the mining executive who died aged 83…
Brown Study
The first public opinion polls since the return of Kevin Rudd show that the Labor party is in with a…
Australian notes
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
As this is the thinking man’s column, I thought it useful to reflect on some of the wider issues emerging…
Across the aisle
Thousands of kilometres from the Sturm und Drang of whirling leadership speculation in Canberra, another power struggle erupts with much…