Articles from The Stump

After Julia Gillard tripped on her high heels during a visit to the Gandhi memorial in New Delhi last year, New Limited put together a list of the “Five Best Political Falls”. John Howard’s 2007 slip in Perth came in at number two, behind Fidel Castro falling off stage at the end of a speech in 2004.

I was out of town for most of the Melbourne Comedy Festival, but I was back in time to catch the final session of Aamer Rahman’s “The Truth Hurts”. Given that the show was very heavily booked, it seems likely to have a repeat airing. I was about to recommend it with a proviso about how it is best avoided by those who refuse to believe that racism in Australia is real and damaging. But that would leave Rahman preaching to the converted, which is hardly his intention.

There’s been a lot of hype this week from News Ltd and the Coalition about the purported threat to a free press from Stephen Conroy’s plan to require the print and online media’s self-regulatory bodies to show they can self-regulate. Conroy has been compared to the vilest dictators in history for this outrage.

Well, if you want an example of a government imposing direct control on journalism, look no further than the Howard government’s 2006 media ownership laws.

By-elections are not necessarily the most exciting events to watch out for in politics. It is easy to dismiss their results as being protest votes rather than early predictions of what is in store for political parties at the big event; however, it is hard to ignore the results of last week’s by-election in Eastleigh.