SAINT Patrick’s Day is a day to celebrate, but it also marks one of the most infamous incidents in Australian political history.
On March 17, 1948, in Brisbane, something very significant happened, something that deserves to be remembered – especially as Queensland gears up for a crucial state election.
On that day, Australia’s first and only Communist Party MP, Frederick (“Fred”) Woolnough Paterson, was savagely bashed by a plain-clothes policeman – almost certainly on the direct orders of authoritarian ALP state premier E.M. (“Ned”) Hanlon.
This brutal attack occurred while Fred Paterson was …

THE Supreme Court will rule today on whether The Australian Party can legally stand as an abbreviation of Katter’s Australian Party at Queensland’s March 24 election.
Such an abbreviation is, the latter argues, a form of discrimination.
Founded by the maverick federal Independent MP for the vast federal seat of Kennedy, Bob Katter, the party has announced that if its abbreviation is allowed to stand, it could challenge the result in up to 76 of the 89 seats in Queensland’s one-house parliament.
Katter’s attempts to change the way his party is represented on …

BORN in London on February 24, 1733, educated at Eton and Clare Hall, Cambridge, and elected unopposed for the family seat of Whitchurch, Tommy Townshend entered the House of Commons when he was just 21.

At 49 he became secretary of state for home affairs with ministerial responsibility for the peace negotiations with the Americans. Although he had expressed some sympathy for the rebellious Americans during their war of independence, as a negotiator he held fast to what he perceived to be British interests, especially in what is now Canada.
Physically beefy …

WARNINGS about the role of “faceless men” in the ALP have been a feature of modern Australian politics since 1963. That was the year in which Robert Menzies won a federal election by turning it into a virtual referendum directed against the power of such unelected apparatchiks. This abiding fascination with Labor’s faceless men peaked again on June 24, 2010.
Over the course of a single night, Australia got a new Labor Prime Minister courtesy of a party coup orchestrated by a cabal of sub-factional heavyweights.
Judged by Wednesday’s declaration of war …

THE Liberal National Party will almost certainly win government after the Queensland election on March 24, but it may prove to be a rather more difficult task than many pundits think.
To begin with, the state’s electoral boundaries favour Labor, giving Premier Anna Bligh a six-seat head start, and together with the benefits of incumbency her government is still not dead and buried.
Bligh is an experienced operator who is running an extremely tough campaign.
Because the LNP’s extra-parliamentary leader Campbell Newman is the frontrunner, he is under huge media pressure and scrutiny …

ROSS Fitzgerald is a well known journalist, historian and novelist (the Grafton Everest series). He is also a survivor of alcoholism, which led him to psychiatric wards, shock therapy, and suicide attempts. Alcoholics Anonymous not only gave him faith in the power to accept his condition, but the will to help others. AA is a community of people who have faith – in God, in humanity, in the power to overcome the weakest part of themselves.
Hear the interview with Ross Fitzgerald on ABC Radio, February 5, 2012
Click here to listen