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 […]

Steggall says ‘no alternative’: indies must stand up for sensible centre

Women are at the forefront of the ‘Voices for’ movement in safe Liberal seats because the Liberal Party’s pre-selection process is “absolutely patriarchal in nature” according to the independent MP for Warringah, Zali Steggall. A closed-door preselection policy designed to maintain the status quo to keep women out, is how Steggall described the process in […]

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 […]

Diary of an Orbost climate refugee: @greengipps reports on #AustralianBushfires

There’s nothing special about me this week. I’m one of many hundreds, maybe thousands, worried about their homes burning down. My home in Cabbage Tree Creek, East Gippsland, might be burning as I write. I have a fire bunker which was about to get installed when the fires started and now no heavy machinery available. […]

Seeking a Fair Go in a ‘World of Pain’ by @sarah_capper

It’s hard to fully comprehend, but just eight months after being elected, the Coalition-friendly News Limited broadsheet ‘The Australian’ ran with the headline, ‘Coalition in World of Pain’ emblazoned across its front page early this week. Sure, it was selectively quoting Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who had used the expression in justifying why the Government […]

Repair and hope for the #Pilliga Forest, by long-time campaigner Iris Ray Nunn

  By Iris Ray Nunn 18th March 2014 Margo: Iris covered the battle to save the Pilliga State Forest from Santos CSG for the No Fibs CSG Citizen Journalism project late last year. It seemed hopeless, then… I know big business has not pulled their CSG operations out of the Pilliga, Yet, but, also, as well […]

No Fibs Bennelong reporter @preciouspress counters Paul Sheehan race attack on @jasonyatsenli

By Jack Sumner 29 August 2013 In the Sydney Morning Herald today Paul Sheehan wrote “Labor pulls out race card in bid to win over Chinese“. His flimsy justification for this serious allegation is: “During the 2007 campaign, Labor shamelessly played the race card in Bennelong against Howard, emphasising Rudd’s fluency in Mandarin, his links to […]

The New Front Page: @YaThinkN reviews @timdunlop book

By Noely Neate 25 July 2013 Source: Yathink.com.au   As a punter, books written on media – particularly ones based on the relationship between traditional media institutions and the internet – fascinate me. I don’t want to be a journalist as I am quite happy in my small business, but I am an avid devourer of […]

Equal Love and gay marriage law reform: Wills candidates talk to @takvera

By John Englart 18 August 2013 Gay marriage law reform, equal love, is about ending a disrciminatory practice presently enshrined in law. It would be something so easy to do and to move on to much bigger issues. Yet it lingers as an issue at another Federal election. This week Prime Minister Kevin Rudd promised […]