“Miners and other resource industries aren’t just ATMs for everyone else to draw from without that money having first been earned. Only I can do that.”
Gina Rinehart has hit the spotlight again this week, telling us the sky is falling unless we follow her instructions on how to make her more rich. Again, she has demanded Australia look to the rest of the world to change its wicked Commie ways. Continue reading
20 years ago, Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, and Sandra Bullock set a new low for Hollywood mediocrity with Demolition Man. a dystopian future, in which tobacco, alcohol, red meat, salt, sexual activity, and foul language had been outlawed, all in favour of an authoritarian state obsessed with public health. The film itself was appalling – but the prophecy is upon us…
For decades now, the anti-smoking crusade has marched forward in triumph. Taxes, education, taxes, confronting advertisements, taxes, medical interventions, taxes, nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs), taxes, strict marketing regulations, and of course, taxes, have attacked from all angles. Not to mention the frowning of a lifetime smokers cop every time they light up. Continue reading
Labor has finally found a piece of maturity amongst the wreckage of its government. The “leadership spill” today was a masterful tactic to shore up the leadership credentials of both Gillard and Rudd. Continue reading
So “The Man” Mundine was back making headlines again recently. Well, headlines on page 40-something at least. Turning his back on the national anthem, he chose to make yet another statement about how racist Australia is. This bloke’s showboating is usually excessive, though all part and parcel of a sport that rewards controversy and ego. But one this one occasion, he was right. The national anthem is a throwback to an Australia that we no longer recognise. Continue reading
“As the true grail will bring you life, the false grail will take it from you”
In the final gruesome scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the middle-aged villain, Walter Donovan, grows old and dies in under a minute. He had spent his life chasing the Holy Grail – the mythical chalice that once caught the blood of Christ, promising eternal life to whomsoever should drink from it - then died after sipping from a shiny golden imitation. Ironically, his pursuit of eternal life cost him the very thing he hoped to preserve.
Much the same can be said of the Labor government.
“White man came across the sea, he bought us pain and misery, he killed our tribes, he killed our creed, he took our game for his own need” – Iron Maiden, “Run to the Hills”
Australia Day has become a day that divides. Two loud voices shouting across a great divide, one representing the “black armband” view, the other, the “white blindfold”. The former see it as a day of mourning, a shameful exercise in arrogant nationalism at the expense of aboriginals. “Invasion Day”, it is said, ought to be the moniker for the day the evil white man set foot on this island and set about doing his evils deeds. Blind to the reality of history, they have isolated our own experience as some horrible aberration, a millstone of shame forever upon our necks. The latter, by contrast, deny the history books, seeing Australian settlement as a morally triumphant day, the first step in an unblemished and proud history to be celebrated with reckless abandon. The truth, as always, lies in the grey area between.
