NOT very many Australians know that Andrew Robb chairs the federal Coalition policy development committee, with its deputy chairman being the former adviser to Peter Costello and now Victorian member for Casey, Tony Smith.
This important committee has been working overtime to ensure the Tony Abbott-led opposition will go to the next federal election with a policy platform that adds up politically, philosophically and fiscally. Systematically but unobtrusively and in the main under the political radar, Robb and Smith have been dotting their policy i’s and crossing their costing t’s.
After the …

A MERE 2 1/2 months ago the Queensland Labor government was seen to be facing the political oblivion that looks certain to beset its counterpart in NSW.
This was until the January floods and Cyclone Yasi allowed Anna Bligh to show some political leadership for the first time. Her performance was impressive but it took more than three years for Bligh to act like a premier. And it remains to be seen whether her improved personal ratings, coupled with a revamped cabinet, will carry over into electoral support and save her …

AT the height of the catastrophic floods that last month engulfed much of Queensland, including Brisbane, Labor Premier Anna Bligh begged the state’s citizens to “remember who we are”.
In rhetoric reminiscent of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Peter Beattie and other long-serving premiers, Labor and conservative alike, Bligh’s answer to the conundrum of how to be optimistic and survive this natural disaster was crystal clear. We are, she said, lips aquiver, “Queenslanders. We’re the people that they breed tough, north of the border. We’re the ones that they knock down, and we …

WE would condemn any society that refuses prisoners the right to rehabilitate themselves.
Yet this is exactly what the Queensland government is doing by stifling the artistic aspirations of those behind bars.
In September 2009 the Queensland Parliament passed legislation (Section 28 of the Corrective Services Act 2006) that prevents the artworks of prisoners in the state being sold or exhibited.
They can be gifted, but only with permission from the Queensland Department of Corrective Services.
In fact this overly punitive and ill-conceived legislation introduced by the Bligh Labor government runs contrary to international …

Few Australians release that it was the discovery of gold at Gympie by the semi-literate James Nash in October 1867 that almost certainly saved from bankruptcy the fledgling colony of Queensland, which had only separated from New South Wales in 1859. The reality is that at the time of this spectacular gold rush at Gympie, some 160 kilometres north of Brisbane, the Bank of Queensland had closed its doors, the colony of less than 22,000 settlers was in the grip of a severe depression, most public works had been abandoned, …

THE extraordinary revelations at the Fitzgerald inquiry between 1987 and 1989 shattered the public’s confidence in the Queensland police force, destroyed the then National Party state government, and led to the election of the first Queensland Labor government in 32 years.
The head of the inquiry, Tony Fitzgerald, identified widespread police and political corruption and the use of selected leaks to manipulate journalists and makers of public opinion, along with other matters of significant malfeasance.
As Fitzgerald said in his report: “The media is able to be used by politicians, police officers …