As the next federal election looms, there’s much more focus now on centre-right candidates running against Liberal incumbents in blue-ribbon seats across Australia, especially inner-urban seats in Sydney and Melbourne, but also more generally. In this latest edition of @transitzonepod we continue our side-bar series on grassroots democracy and the growing independents’ movement, modelled by […]
#ClimateAction
Igniting an independent backburn: Margo Kingston finds hope in the grassroots for #AusVotes
AS I CONSIDER how to contribute at the next federal election, I thought I’d republish, with permission, a chapter I wrote for the Fremantle Press anthology Women of a Certain Rage, in January 2020 after the failed 2019 ‘Climate Election’, amid the worst bushfires Australia had ever seen, before COVID changed everything. #AustraliaBurns: Rage, A Climate […]
Transcript of #TransitZone podcast interview with Zali Steggall on THURSDAY, 2 September 2021 lightly edited for clarity.
PETER CLARKE: As we record another #transitzone podcast our two most populous states, New South Wales and Victoria, are still in lockdown, with rapidly rising locally acquired COVID Delta cases. Victorian new cases today are up sharply, and, in New South Wales, still well over 1000 cases each day. The intensely infectious Delta variant has pitched us, and […]
The Man Who Walked into Parliament with a Lump of Coal: Zali Steggall in conversation with #transitzone
Another podcast in the continuing #transitzone side-bar series on grassroots democracy in Australia and the emerging and evolving “Voices for” independents movements gearing up for the looming federal election. Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke in conversation with Zali Steggall, the federal independent member for Warringah in Sydney, a “safe” Liberal seat until Steggall ousted the […]
Turnbull reads Scotty’s COVID report card: Peter Clarke’s view from ‘the bunker’
WHEN we first locked down in Melbourne in mid-March, 2020, I had just finished building a small, state-of-the-art, sound-recording studio in a bungalow in our backyard. The final foam squares and carpet were put in place just before we hunkered down. The project started between the 2019-20 bushfires and the rapid arrival in our lives […]
Just a complete train wreck: Transcript of Part 2 of the #transitzone interview with Malcom Turnbull
Peter Clarke: Let’s get back to the elephant in the room. Mr Turnbull, recently you said you can’t think of “a bigger black and white failure of public administration” than the Morrison government’s failures in procuring covid vaccines and their design and execution of the vaccination rollout. Now, as you well know, we in Australia […]
Transcript of interview by Peter Clarke and Margo Kingston with former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recorded August 11, 2012, lightly edited for clarity and succinctness. Part 1
Transcript part 1 Peter Clarke: Our guest is somebody who’s experienced democratic politics from the outside as a lawyer, banker and journalist, and from right inside the corridors and backrooms of power, where the sausages are actually made, the 29th Prime Minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018, Malcolm Turnbull. Mr Turnbull, welcome to the […]
Turnbull takes to liberalism’s lifeboat as LNP ‘broad church’ blows up: Margo Kingston reports on #IndependentsDay
MALCOLM Turnbull would consider voting for a strong moderate liberal independent in the Sydney federal electorate of Wentworth, and has named NSW seats he believes could be vulnerable if ‘voices for’ groups nominate outstanding moderate liberal independents – Wentworth, Mackellar, North Sydney, Bradfield and Hume. In an interview for the #transitzone podcast, the former prime minister […]
The quest to elect modern liberal independents in blue ribbon seats, by @margokingston1 for #IndependentsDay
First published on The Echo May 25, 2021 Anyone remember ‘Modern Liberals’? They’re the ones who stood at the last election in safe Liberal seats like Goldstein in Melbourne (Tim Wilson), North Sydney (Trent Zimmerman) and the formerly safe liberal seat of Wentworth (Dave Sharma). The idea was to differentiate from un-modern liberals, you know, […]
Environmental activism 2021: An act of love by @margokingston1
First published on Echo NETDAILY February 11, 2021. A long time ago, maybe 20 years, I mentioned climate change in conversation with Professor David Flint, a man who proclaims his deep conservatism and convened Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy. He laughed, saying a stray meteorite would blow up the planet someday, so we may as well do […]