• Time to say goodbye
    To me, Ad Astra, “Time to say goodbye” are among the saddest
    words in our language. Yet say them now we must. I chose Ad Astra
    as my moniker because my secondary school’s motto is ‘sic itur ad astra’,
    which can be liberally interpreted as: “Here is the way to the stars”.
    How inspiring these words have always been to me.
  • Have we got a deal for you
    There is a conspiracy theory that suggests that birds (in the USA
    at least) aren’t real. The claim is that all the birds in the USA were
    hunted down by the government between the late 50’s and early
    70s and replaced with bird like drones to spy on you.
  • Get out of the gutter
    You may not have heard of Mike Rinder. A Scientologist for most
    of his life, at the age of 52 he walked out, and as a result lost his
    family, friends, employment and pretty well everything else in his life.
    RInder has written a book on his time in Scientology, runs a
    website that questions Scientology beliefs and practices...
  • Was Amtrak Joe derailed?
    Prior to becoming President, Joe Biden was a US Senator for around
    36 years. He is known as Amtrak Joe as he routinely took the daily 90
    minute each way train trip (on the USA’s national passenger train network
    - Amtrak) from his home in Delaware to Washington DC to represent his state.
  • If employers can measure well-being...
    Last September, you might have seen Qantas CEO Alan Joyce
    received a pay increase of $278,000 per annum. It seems that Joyce
    has met or exceeded the performance goals set by his employers and
    contractually has earned the reward. It does, however, raise a larger question.
  • Coming back to haunt you
    In his recent Budget reply speech, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton
    laboured (pun intended) on the increasingly difficult to achieve promise by
    Prime Minister Albanese that power bills will be $275 less in 2025. While the
    government is claiming the modelling done in 2021 supports the accuracy of
    the promise, 2021 modelling doesn’t account for changes in circumstances since then.

The Political Sword

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Magic Money

Naturally enough in the wake of the catastrophic bushfires that have affected most states since last October, there has been a national discussion on theories that, according to their proponents, would have reduced the risk of bushfires starting or would allow us to more effectively attack the ragin...

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Fiddling while Australia burns

Sometime in the future when Australia is finally taking real and meaningful action on climate change by reducing emissions across the board (and hopefully we aren’t all suffering a reduction in quality of life due to the compressed timeframes and drastic action required to obtain a result), it would...

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Beware!

The Festive Season is over. Christmas, with all its seasonal trappings, delighted and enriched us. The joy of being with family and friends remains a cherished memory. The summer break refreshed us. Now, the prospect of another long year looms. What does it hold? How well will the pleasures we’v...

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Houston we have a problem

This blog site traditionally has a look back at what we commented on in the past year as our last article come December. This year, we’re going to break the cycle and look at what Prime Minister Morrison should be considering over the next month or so instead of asking ‘how good is the cricket?’. Th...

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The ultimate copout

You’ve probably heard Prime Minister Morrison offering ‘thoughts and prayers’ to those affected by the bushfires that continue to burn in parts of Australia, or the ongoing drought, or perhaps the bombings that occurred in Sri Lanka last Easter. Morrison isn’t the only ‘world leader’ that follows t...

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Unraveling Frydenberg’s Mind

Since Treasurer Josh Frydenberg sits side-by-side with PM Morrison at the pinnacle of the Morrison government, it is appropriate that we query the state of his mind, just as we sought to understand Morrison’s in Unraveling Morrison’s Mind. There is no evidence that he is attracted to the conspiracy ...

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What goes around

Instead of complying with treaty obligations, the Morrison LNP Government is spending like a drunken sailor in an attempt to win a political war to demonstrate how evil and horrible the people who have sought refugee status in Australia after arriving by boat really are. Not only are Morrison and Du...

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Unraveling Morrison’s mind

Warning: This piece contains disturbing material. By keeping it brief I hope any mental distress it might cause will be minimized. Did you see Michael Pascoe’s article in the October 23 edition of The New Daily: What we don’t know: Is our Prime Minister a nutter? As Pascoe is a balanced ...

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Quiet Australians

Sorry Mr Morrison, I don’t want to be one of your quiet Australians. The problem with being quiet is that I would give the impression I implicitly support whatever you, Dutton and the other Ministers do in my name, solely because I didn’t say what I think, feel, believe or observe. The other issue i...

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Don't shoot the messenger

Those that live outside the south-east corner of Queensland probably don’t take much notice of the politics of the Brisbane City Council. Brisbane has an annual budget and population larger than Tasmania and, somewhat unusually for Australia, is a Council comprising mostly overtly party political el...

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Peeling the skin off the avocado

Recall how you felt when you last fondled a plump avocado, deep green, beautifully formed, slightly soft to the touch, seemingly ripe for consumption, only to find that when your knife punctured its alluring skin and peeled it back you were greeted by grey spots, rotting inedible pulp, and precious ...

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Protest tactics matter

Those that demonstrated around the world for ‘Extinction Rebellion’ recently have certainly been making headlines. Pity it is for the wrong reasons. On an intellectual level, their point is sound — unless there is meaningful and urgent efforts across the world to mitigate climate change, there is an...

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Is Donald Trump mad? - revisited

Around two years ago, The Political Sword published Is Donald Trump mad? In November of last year, we published Is Donald Trump crumbling? It could be argued that Trump’s recent behaviour warrants another such article. But why bother? We’ve said it all before, as have columnists the world ...

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Do unto others

Who knows if the pages of Morrison’s Bible might be missing the pages that discuss ’do unto others as you wish them do to you’? Those words are one version of ’the golden rule’ which is a tenet of most religions according to Wikipedia. His years as Immigration Minister and then Treasurer demonstrate...

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Your input is valuable

Since 2015, Australian telecommunications providers have been required to keep the metadata relating to your and my electronic conversations, internet searches, text messages, emails and so on for a period of two years. Apparently, our ‘security’ depends on the government of the day knowing that the...

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The hazard of heedless politicians

No ‘heedless’ is not a misprint; nor should it have been ‘headless’, although some might prefer that descriptor with poultry overtones! ‘Heedless’ signifies an alarming propensity so many politicians exhibit – the capacity to ignore evidence that does not align with their entrenched beliefs, their u...

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The yoke of inequality burdens us all

It was in 2012 that The Price of Inequality by Nobel Prize winner Joseh Stiglitz was published in America and the United Kingdom. In 2013 it was distributed worldwide by Penguin Books. This seminal work, tellingly subtitled How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future was widely acknowledged.As ...

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The politics of religious freedom

The dictum is not to talk about religion and politics in polite company. If you share that belief, read no further. Religious freedom is an interesting concept. A quick search came up with no current law in Australia that makes a belief in any faith tradition illegal, and anti-discrimination legisl...

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Cancer sucks

It seems that most Australians have been affected in some way by cancer. The chances are you know a cancer survivor, remember someone who didn’t survive, have sympathy with someone undergoing treatment or have a friend or relative that knows someone who has been affected in some way. One thing in c...

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Democracy via three-word slogans

Another title might have been Democracy according to Hayne, as it was The Honourable Justice Kenneth Madison Hayne AC, QC, Royal Commissioner in the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, who in his address to The Melbourne Law School on 26 J...

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