Wednesday 25-02-2026 7:59am

Riot Squad Police with Long arms (weapons) patrolling outside the SCG. 1st Day of 5th Ashes Test in Sydney. Photo: John Appleyard.

This is what we are down to — a permanent 250-officer rapid response unit which will work 24/7 to tackle hate-related and religiously motivated offences in NSW. A lot of lives have been lost to get to this point and we are still nowhere near controlling the issue. Bowen's bigotry has been replaced with Bourke's Brides. Regardless of public opinion the women and their children are Australian citizens. They are not guilty of anything except poor marriage choices and that could probably be blamed on their family or father as choices usually are not theirs. It's mainly the males that are firebombing the religious and it's the residents that are here. Now it's Bourke's politics that are endangering the future. He's looking after his back yard or local voting base; stuff the rest of us. And no rapid response squad is going to change that. "Since Albanese won the raffle and became PM, under the ALP / Greens, Australian's have become poorer, become less independent, freedoms eroded and Australia has become an unsafe country!! … how many more will suffer under your gaslighting, no responsibility, no accountability reign of suffering ??" — Not my words but a public reaction to the families returning and quoted in Brisbane's The Courier Mail — Des Dugan


 SPORT:

We are going to miss Alyssa

Nice little farewell for Healy with Australia coming out trumps in the onedayer in Brisbane last night. [click to continue reading]

It was Alyssa Healy (50 off 70 balls) and Beth Mooney (76 off 79) who used all their experience to steady the innings by hitting the gaps.

Australia won 4/217 against India’s all out for 214.

Daniel Cherny and Tyler Lewis in the Oz report Gardner captured 3-33 off her seven overs and chimed in with a direct hit run out to close India’s innings at 10-214 off 48.3 overs.

Australia had not lost any of its 20 ODI matches at Allan Border Field coming into Tuesday and made the perfect start to keeping that record intact in the second innings.

The retiring Alyssa Healy kicked off the chase with an exquisite straight drive but would play an unfamiliar anchor role to partner Phoebe Litchfield.

They took the Aussies to 0-55 before Litchfield (run-a-ball 32) and Georgia Voll were dismissed in successive deliveries.

The win puts Australia back level against India after the rare Twenty20 series defeat with two more ODI matches ahead of the Test match.

Ellyse Perry and Kim Garth will miss the ODI series against India due to injury in a huge blow to Australia’s bid to turn around the multi-format series.

The Aussies trail four points to two after losing the T20 series 2-1.

As CODE Sports revealed, Garth was sent for scans on Monday before officially being ruled out on Tuesday afternoon.

Veteran Megan Schutt returns to bolster the bowling attack, while Alyssa Healy opened the batting with Phoebe Litchfield as she starts her farewell tour.

T20 opener Georgia Voll is listed to bat in the middle order.


 STOCKMARKET:

A rebound amidst trade tariffs

U.S. stocks rebounded on Tuesday, led by recovering technology shares as investors assessed Anthropic’s announcement of new AI tools and weighed President Donald Trump’s shifting stance on trade tariffs, Reuters updated on today's website. [click to continue reading]

Anthropic announced several new plug-ins targeting industries such as investment banking and HR, weeks after its earlier releases stoked a selloff in traditional software stocks.

Several other sectors ranging from commercial real estate to trucking and logistics have recently logged steep declines, as new developments in the AI space stoked worries of industrywide disruptions.

The S&P 500 software and services index, which has plunged more than 23% so far this year, advanced 0.8% on the day with help from Salesforce, which was among the biggest gainers.

February has been a dour month for U.S. equities as high stock valuations and AI concerns pressure technology and other sectors, with investors questioning if massive AI spending was actually paying off.

At 11:41 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 338.50 points, or 0.69%, to 49,142.56, the S&P 500 added 39.24 points, or 0.57%, to 6,876.99, and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 197.09 points, or 0.87%, to 22,824.37.

All three main indexes fell more than 1% on Monday, with financials and software stocks among the worst hit as the fallout from Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down Trump’s tariffs triggered an exodus from high-risk equities.

After the verdict, Trump announced a temporary global tariff of 10%, which came into effect on Tuesday. He later said the levy would be 15%, but it was unclear when and if this would apply.

Analysts also attributed Monday’s selloff to a bearish report from Citrini Research, opens new tab outlining potential threats to the global economy from the rise of artificial intelligence.

Yesterday’s reaction was so overdone that it can't help but bounce a little bit... the opening is just a reflection of the disaster that took place yesterday, said Ken Polcari, partner and chief market strategist at Slatestone Wealth.

Most megacap and growth stocks bounced back slightly on Tuesday, with Apple leading gains with a 2.3% rise, while Nvidia climbed 0.4% ahead of its earnings, which are due after market close on Wednesday.

Advanced Micro Devices jumped 7.6% after the chipmaker said it had agreed to sell up to $60 billion worth of AI chips to Meta Platforms over five years.

Home Depot rose 3.3% after the home-improvement chain operator topped estimates for fourth-quarter results and maintained its annual forecasts.

Keysight Technologies climbed 23.9% after the electronic-equipment maker forecast second-quarter profit ahead of Wall Street estimates.

Meanwhile, several Federal Reserve officials including Fed governors Christopher Waller and Lisa Cook are speaking through the day.

Trump is slated to deliver the traditional State of the Union address to Congress later in the day.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.52-to-1 ratio on the NYSE, and by a 1.87-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P 500 posted 32 new 52-week highs and 12 new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 71 new highs and 133 new lows.


 NEWS:

🎪 Progressive
need to smell
the wattle

Progressives must embrace Australia Day and ensure the nation’s flag is not surrendered to be used as propaganda for the hard right, government frontbencher Julian Hill says, as part of an extraordinary blueprint on how Labor should tackle booming support for populist right-wing parties that includes calling out radical Islamist ideologies, Sarah Ison reports in The Australian today. [click to see continue reading].

As Pauline Hanson’s One Nation surpasses the Coalition in the polls and edges towards Labor’s primary vote, the Assistant Multicultural Minister will use a speech to the McKell Institute today to urge the Left not to demonise those who attend March for Australia rallies and rather recognise they deserve to be listened to rather than dismissed.

Angst over some cohorts coming into Australia and continuing to follow unacceptable cultural practices such as gender segregation and forced marriage must also be called out, Mr Hill says, warning that progressives must not fall into the trap of failing to acknowledge real concerns over such issues.

It is a myth of course that most migrants don't integrate; they overwhelmingly do, he will say in Sydney today. “But the trap for progressives is to fail to acknowledge that concerns are real, and to act when genuine issues arise.

“Progressives must also not be scared to call out unacceptable cultural practices or expressions that breach core tenets of modern Australian multiculturalism.

Many decent Australians have attended Marches for Australia or may vote for One Nation. Good people are peddled lies on social media and fear and anger in right wing media. They deserve to be listened to, rather than dismissed: the economic concerns of frankly 'pissed off' people or worries about integration are real.

As One Nation calls for net zero migration and Angus Taylor prepares to unveil his own policies that put Australian values at the heart of the nation’s immigration system, Mr Hill will say debate on the topic reflects genuine community anxieties.

Debates over the scale and focus of the migration program are entirely legitimate, he will say. There are genuine community anxieties, though Australia does not suffer from 'mass-migration' … net overseas migration was unsustainably high and is now falling — yet diversity and migration are being weaponised in similar ways as overseas.

In a striking message to some members of Labor and other left-wing parties, Mr Hill will urge against sneering at those who celebrate Australia and don Aussie garb, stressing the importance of proudly embracing modern Australia.

(This) means not shying away from love of our country, traditions and common symbols, he will say. “Controversially to some, I believe this means embracing Australia Day for as long as there is no consensus to change the date, as a day to reflect, celebrate and be proud of our country and our complex history.

Why on earth would we cede our flag, our national day and institutions as propaganda for extremists and the hard right?

The comments follow the politicisation of Australia Day in recent years, with left-wing parties such as the Greens seeking to change the date while conservatives including Peter Dutton called for a boycott of Woolworths when the supermarket failed to stock enough Australia Day merchandise.


 NEWS:

🚆 High speed
train a
hairbreath closer

Four decades after it was first floated, the Albanese government has announced an update on a high-speed rail link that would take Sydneysiders to Newcastle in just one hour — but there’s a catch, James O'Doherty writes in the Daily Telegraph newspaper reports today. [click to read more] But, unsurprisingly, there is no time frame on when trains will actually be on the tracks.

The High Speed Rail Authority will from today start -planning the fast train from Sydney to Newcastle to get the project shovel ready in two years.

The development phase will cost taxpayers $660m before construction contracts are even awarded.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Infrastructure Minister Catherine King will also today release the business case for the Sydney-Newcastle high-speed link, which could outline the eye-watering cost of building the project, tipped to top $90bln, making it the most expensive infrastructure build in Australia’s history.

A 2023 report from the High Speed Rail Authority did not put an estimate on the final cost, but recommended the project begin staged construction in 2027.

Under that plan, fast trains would be running between Sydney and Newcastle by 2039.

The Albanese government estimated a fast train from Sydney to Newcastle would create more than 99,000 jobs and boost the Australian economy by $250bn over 50 years.

High Speed Rail between Newcastle and Sydney will change the way people live, work and travel in our country’s most populous region, Ms King said.

Mr Albanese, a long-time supporter of fast rail, went to the 2022 election promising to spend $500m to begin planning for a high-speed train.

Of that, $70m was spent on a business case for the Newcastle-Sydney link.

The government has now chipped in an extra $230m for the planning stage, taking the total cost to $660m.

While planning and development work is finally under way, it could be another decade before any fast trains actually leave the station.

That would mark 50 years since proposals were first floated for a high-speed rail link, in the 1980s.

Ed: Methinkest here comes another Kosciuszko renewables spendthrift.



 LOCAL:

Pay in line for rural firefighters

Dungog is one of the Upper Hunter Electorate brigades hoping to secure new recruits from a Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) campaign to bolster the ranks of on-call firefighters reports Dave Layzell in his weekly bulletin.

The Become an On-Call Firefighter drive urges people to join FRNSW to help their communities and learn new skills, while being paid an hourly rate to supplement their income.

FRNSW Commissioner, Jeremy Fewtrell, is rolling out the welcome mat to potential recruits describing on-call as a terrific opportunity for people across the state with Fire and Rescue willing to work around availability.

He urges Men and women from all walks of life to visit the FRNSW website for more information.




🎪 Pauline
selling more
bait than Albo

The popularity of One Nation has risen in another major state, suggesting a hung parliament is likely if an election was held today David Wu writes on the news.com.au website today. [click to read more]

Polling by Roy Morgan showed the ALP received only 25% of the primary vote compared to the Pauline Hanson-led party on 30%, while the Liberal-Nationals trailed on 19%. Minor parties and independents made up the remaining 26%.

It means there would likely be a hung parliament if an election were held today and that voters' second and third preferences will prove crucial in deciding the make-up of the next NSW Parliament.

In the three-party preferred stakes, Labor is in front of the major parties on 44%, comfortably ahead of One Nation on 33.5% and the LNP on 22.5%, when combined with Greens, minor parties and independents.

Breaking down the statistics by gender, men are divided on One Nation and Labor at 38%, while the LNP trailed at 24%, on three-party preferred.

While women voters were starkly different in their primary support, with Labor at 50%, almost double One Nation (29.5%) and the LNP (20.5%).

But the analysis found the primary vote of all four age groups (18-34, 35-49, 50-64, and 65+) was consistent, with One Nation ahead 28.5% to 32%.

That was followed by Labor on 24 to 26%, LNP between 17% and 20% and the Greens 9.5% to 14.5%.

However, NSW Premier Chris Minns is still the preferred leader of NSW.

Those surveyed were asked: Thinking of Premier Chris Minns and Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane. In your opinion, who would make the better New South Wales Premier?"

One in six respondents preferred Mr Minns compared to Ms Sloane.

A look at the demographic results shows Premier Chris Minns leading amongst both genders, all four key age groups, in both Sydney and Country New South Wales, and amongst ALP supporters, Greens supporters, One Nation supporters, and supporters of independent and Other Parties, Roy Morgan said in its report.

Asked whether they approve or disapprove of the way Mr Minns has handled his first term, 56% said he had done a good job, one in four disagreed, and 3% could not say.

One Nation’s popularity has surged in the wake of the Bondi terror attack.

The poll, conducted between February 16 and 19, surveyed 2108 voters.

It comes after a Newspoll showed the Liberal Party was facing further disaster in South Australia ahead of the state election next month.

The latest Newspoll, conducted for The Australian, shows One Nation’s core support has skyrocketed to 24% while the Liberals' primary vote has collapsed to 14%.

If replicated across the state, the Liberal Party could lose its 13 seats - a threat all the more likely in its tenuously held rural and regional seats.

One Nation’s vote was also double that of the Greens, which sat at just 12%.




🎪 Pauline
selling more
bait than Albo

The popularity of One Nation has risen in another major state, suggesting a hung parliament is likely if an election was held today David Wu writes on the news.com.au website today. [click to read more]

Polling by Roy Morgan showed the ALP received only 25% of the primary vote compared to the Pauline Hanson-led party on 30%, while the Liberal-Nationals trailed on 19%. Minor parties and independents made up the remaining 26%.

It means there would likely be a hung parliament if an election were held today and that voters' second and third preferences will prove crucial in deciding the make-up of the next NSW Parliament.

In the three-party preferred stakes, Labor is in front of the major parties on 44%, comfortably ahead of One Nation on 33.5% and the LNP on 22.5%, when combined with Greens, minor parties and independents.

Breaking down the statistics by gender, men are divided on One Nation and Labor at 38%, while the LNP trailed at 24%, on three-party preferred.

While women voters were starkly different in their primary support, with Labor at 50%, almost double One Nation (29.5%) and the LNP (20.5%).

But the analysis found the primary vote of all four age groups (18-34, 35-49, 50-64, and 65+) was consistent, with One Nation ahead 28.5% to 32%.

That was followed by Labor on 24 to 26%, LNP between 17% and 20% and the Greens 9.5% to 14.5%.

However, NSW Premier Chris Minns is still the preferred leader of NSW.

Those surveyed were asked: Thinking of Premier Chris Minns and Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane. In your opinion, who would make the better New South Wales Premier?"

One in six respondents preferred Mr Minns compared to Ms Sloane.

A look at the demographic results shows Premier Chris Minns leading amongst both genders, all four key age groups, in both Sydney and Country New South Wales, and amongst ALP supporters, Greens supporters, One Nation supporters, and supporters of independent and Other Parties, Roy Morgan said in its report.

Asked whether they approve or disapprove of the way Mr Minns has handled his first term, 56% said he had done a good job, one in four disagreed, and 3% could not say.

One Nation’s popularity has surged in the wake of the Bondi terror attack.

The poll, conducted between February 16 and 19, surveyed 2108 voters.

It comes after a Newspoll showed the Liberal Party was facing further disaster in South Australia ahead of the state election next month.

The latest Newspoll, conducted for The Australian, shows One Nation’s core support has skyrocketed to 24% while the Liberals' primary vote has collapsed to 14%.

If replicated across the state, the Liberal Party could lose its 13 seats - a threat all the more likely in its tenuously held rural and regional seats.

One Nation’s vote was also double that of the Greens, which sat at just 12%.




🎠 Move on
no surprises
here …

The Australian government has confirmed it would support any proposal to remove Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from the royal line of succession after the former prince was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, Dan Jervis-Bardy reports on today's Guardian website. [click to continue reading].

With the UK government poised to consider laws to strip Mountbatten-Windsor of his right to inherit the throne once any police investigation was finalised, the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has written to his British counterpart, Keir Starmer, to offer the country’s backing.

The former prince is eighth in line to the throne after Princes William and Harry and their children, despite him having relinquished his royal titles in October after new information came to light about his links to Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and child sex offender.

This means Mountbatten-Windsor is still a counsellor of state, the group of adult royals who could be named to fill in for King Charles III if he was ill or abroad, even if in practice this would never happen for him, as only working royals are used.

Removing him from the line of succession would require an act of the UK parliament and the support of the 14 Commonwealth countries where King Charles III is head of state, which includes Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

In light of recent events concerning Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, I am writing to confirm that my government would agree to any proposal to remove him from the line of royal succession, an extract of Albanese’s letter to Starmer, supplied to Guardian Australia, reads.

I agree with His Majesty that the law must now take its full course and there must be a full, fair and proper investigation.

These are grave allegations and Australians take them seriously.

The Guardian has reported that Buckingham Palace would not stand in the way of plans to remove Mountbatten-Windsor from the royal line of succession.

In a statement after the arrest of his brother, King Charles said the the law must take its course.



Murrurundi Times news site with items covering national news and Upper Hunter region including the township of Murrurundi

  COMMENT

Personally, I've always thought the job of a politician is less to work out what voters want and promise it to them than to work out what the country needs, intelligently deliver that based on your party’s values, and then persuade voters to support it. That said, no democratic politician can be indifferent to voters' views, and effective political leadership starts with understanding where voters are before proceeding to try to take them to where they should be, writes Peta Credlin in The Australian today. [click to read more]

While good leaders don't shy away from a fight, the greater the difference between voters' views and a political party’s perception of the national interest, the harder the challenge of leadership and the greater the likelihood of political failure.

The argument used against the Liberal Party, most notably by its former leader Malcolm Turnbull, is that by moving to the right the party is leaving the electorate behind and dooming itself to fail.

There is some evidence that the electorate has moved marginally left, especially on issues where the Liberals have failed to make a contest like climate; but on many hot-button issues it has actually become more conservative.

In two papers published early last year, The Australian Population Research Institute argued that large electoral majorities did not favour the political class’s orthodoxy that high immigration and cultural diversity were unambiguously good for Australia.

While there are dangers here with clumsy language, sensitively and intelligently handled, big change here is exactly what the electorate is looking for. Perhaps it’s new Liberal leader Angus Taylor’s focus on the cultural issue of protecting the Australian way of life, as well as the economic one of restoring Australians' standard of living, that explains the early positive reaction to his elevation.

The TAPRI study, published last February, showed 80% support for reducing migration numbers, 67% support for dealing with skills shortages by raising wages and improving skills training for locals, 67% opposition to increasing ethnic and other forms of diversity, and 58% support for selection policy that takes into account a migrant’s ability to fit into the Australian community.

A further study published in March 2025 found that while 66% of all voters wanted a sharp reduction in the migrant intake, especially of temporary migrants, this was also the view of 58% of Labor and Greens voters. These figures are almost certain to have increased in the wake of the Bondi massacre.

It’s worth noting that while people born overseas are just over 30% of the population, they're only 20% of voters.

Even so, the TAPRI study shows that 77% of Asian-born migrants want lower immigration while English-speaking and European migrants are even likelier than the Australian-born to want lower migration and likelier to want fitting into Australia to be part of migrant selection policy.

And while Asian migrants are more pro-diversity than other Australians, even among them there’s still 50% opposition to using migration to increase diversity.

The most reliable and comprehensive guide to voters' attitudes over time is the Australian National University’s Australian Election Study, which has been asking much the same questions of a representative sample of voters since 1987. On migration issues, the AES reinforces TAPRI’s findings.

The most recent AES report, released in November, showed that 53% of 2025 voters wanted immigration reduced, with only 14% wanting it increased; whereas at the 2022 election the percentage wanting it increased was actually slightly higher than that wanting it reduced. Between 2022 and 2025, the percentage thinking migrants were good for the economy dropped by 10 points and the percentage thinking migrants increased crime rose by 10 points. In 2025, at 50%, voter support for turning back asylum-seeker boats was actually stronger than in 2013.

On other issues, too, the electorate is becoming more conservative. Between 2022 and 2025, the percentage wanting less tax rose from 39 to 42 while the percentage wanting more social spending fell from 31 to 30. As well, the percentage thinking that climate change was a serious threat dropped from 66 to 57, while those thinking it was not increased from 34 to 43.

Based on the totality of voters' responses, the AES judges that voters at the 2025 election leaned slightly to the left with an averaged score of 4.93 out of 10 (where 10 is right and 0 is left). Yet at the previous 2022 election, despite the electorate leaning ever so slightly to the right with a score of 5.05, Anthony Albanese still had a strong win. What’s more, the Coalition still won elections (just) in 2016 and 2019 with an electorate that leaned slightly left. Interestingly, the study shows that voters thought the Coalition was no more right-wing under Peter Dutton in 2025 than it had been under Scott Morrison in 2022; indeed, the Coalition was perceived by voters to have been just as right-wing under Turnbull in 2016 as in the two most recent elections.

When the 2025 Election Study results were released last November, the media focused on the finding that, for the first time, voters felt that Labor (on 32%) was better placed to manage the economy than the Coalition (with just 28%). Yet management of the economy was cited by only 12% of voters as the most important election issue, down from 28% in 2013.

In fact, by far the most significant result was that only 34% of voters in the 2025 study said they always voted for the same party, compared with 63% in 1987. But even this volatility is not especially recent, with more than 50% of voters rusted on at only one of the past seven federal elections. The study reveals about 20% of Coalition voters and about 30% of Labor voters have considered changing their votes during the campaign in every election since 1987.

What this tells me is that election results have more to do with how people view leaders and leadership; it’s leadership after all that most shapes most people’s views on most issues. For the Liberals, in other words, the problem is less that voters have moved away from them but that they have not provided much leadership on the issues voters care about.

Quite apart from the fact that the Liberals in 2025 inexplicably failed to campaign for their energy policy or against Labor’s unrealised capital gains tax policy, plus failed to hammer the fact that government policy had exacerbated the worst fall in living standards in the developed world, the key factors in their humiliation were the collapse of TV in shaping people’s political perceptions, the rise of social media (in which the Coalition was largely MIA) and antipathy towards Dutton who, however unfairly, the study showed had the least voter appeal in its history.

Far from needing to persuade the Australian public that migration numbers are too high and that all migrants must accept Australian values, what this says to me is that on immigration, Taylor is pushing on an open door. Based on the best available data, promising to protect the Australian way of life is exactly what voters want — as well as what our country needs, as the Bondi massacre has put up in flashing neon lights.

Meaning that far from being too right-wing for the electorate, for the first time in years the Liberals are actually taking voters where they want to go.



It took scarcely a moment for Grace Tame’s defenders to insist that urging an enraged crowd to globalise the intifada was not a call to blow up buses and slaughter civilians. Nothing of the sort, they maintained: intifada simply means struggle — and what could be more remote from incitement than that?, Henry Ergas writes in the The Australian today. [click to read more]

Like many of our current pathologies, its roots lie in the heady days of the 1960s. And if the crisis has proved so hard to contain, it is because the ideas and attitudes forged in that period have continued to command allegiance long after the conditions that gave them plausibility fell away — turning inherited reflexes into instruments of chaos and disorder.

At the heart of the changes that shook Australia towards the close of the Menzies era was the emergence of protest movements incubated within rapidly expanding universities. Although multiple influences were at work, developments overseas were especially important.

That influence was reinforced through several channels. For the first time, youth travel occurred on a mass scale: in the 1960s, cheaper fares and rising incomes lifted overseas departure rates among those aged 20-24 more than six-fold.

Meanwhile, television became a primary source of nightly news, transforming political events ∼ including those overseas ∼ into vivid, broadly shared spectacles. Complementing both developments was the diffusion of a distinct youth culture that celebrated oppositional attitudes.

It is consequently unsurprising that the earliest stirrings echoed the US civil rights movement: the Freedom Rides of early 1965 captured the nascent mood.

But it was, of course, the Vietnam War that transformed scattered nuclei of activism into a national phenomenon.

As in the US, the campaign against the war entrenched a new radicalism within Australian universities, marked by revolutionary rhetoric sharply at odds with the tone and posture of the peace movement of the 1950s.

Dominated by communist fronts, that earlier movement had concentrated on attracting fellow travellers from the unions, the ALP and the churches.

It was therefore shaped by a persistent quest for respectability that ∼ although continually undermined by slavish adherence to the Soviet line ∼ left a clear imprint on its leadership style. Consistent with that orientation, its rhetoric during the Vietnam era focused on securing the withdrawal of Australian troops and a negotiated settlement to the war.

By contrast, beginning with the Sydney University ALP Club in 1966, student activists cast the Vietcong as model revolutionaries and replaced the traditional peace movement’s imagery ∼ designed to elicit sympathy through photographs of napalmed children and burning villages ∼ with stylised portrayals of heroic guerillas. Rejecting calls for negotiation as talk into thin air, they embraced a Manichean worldview in which Australians confronted a stark choice between remaining an outpost of imperialism and supporting the forces of progress — that is, between their own soldiers and those they were fighting.

Nor were these radicals especially committed to nonviolence at home. On the contrary, Maoist factions treated violence as revolutionary, particularly when directed at the police and even more so at rival radical groups — producing brawls that culminated in 1978, when Maoists hurled an alleged Trotskyite through a plate-glass window.

Yet these groups remained numerically insignificant. In the tussles for control of the 1970 Moratorium, they were readily outplayed by the traditional peace organisations' battle-hardened Communist cadres, whose overriding objective was to garner support within the labour movement and across the electorate.

At a time when the ALP Right remained a formidable force ∼ particularly in the pivotal states of NSW and Victoria ∼ and when institutions, including the police, still commanded broad respect on the left, assembling wide-ranging support required that demonstrations remain orderly.

The prominence of the give peace a chance motif reinforced the insistence on nonviolence. The result was that the extremists were marginalised and restrained ∼ physically so in Brisbane ∼ allowing the massive nationwide demonstrations of May 8, 1970 to proceed almost entirely peacefully. That was less true of the subsequent Vietnam protests and of the highly confrontational attempts to impede the Springboks' tour in 1971. Yet despite those blemishes, the May 1970 marches conferred on mass demonstrations an enduring legitimacy they had never previously possessed.

A momentous consequence of that legitimacy ∼ and of the subsequent rise to power of the baby boomers, whose worldview had been shaped by the Moratorium ∼ was a far-reaching transformation of the legal framework.

Until then, regulations governing street protests had been squarely directed at maintaining public order: statutory offences legislation and municipal by-laws treated permission to occupy public spaces for rallies and marches as a privilege, granted subject to clear duties and constraints.

The report of the South Australian Royal Commission chaired by Justice Charles Hart Bright and the Public Assemblies Act 1972 (SA) that followed, marked the advent of a different era, in which the authorities had to stringently justify any restrictions.

Entrenching that shift was the High Court’s controversial decision in Brown v Tasmania (2017), which ∼ drawing a very long bow from the already contentious implied freedom of political communication ∼ appeared to elevate even highly disruptive protest into a constitutional entitlement.

However, as the Age of Aquarius gave way to the Age of Rage, the conditions that had once kept mass demonstrations peaceful ebbed away.

Respect for Australian institutions, including the police, curdled into hostility towards a settler colonial state; in an era of political fragmentation and rival echo chambers, the search for a broad base yielded to the imperative of seizing attention; the collapse of the ALP Right and the capture of taxpayer-funded institutions by the far left relaxed the normative and organisational constraints on extremism; and as an apocalyptic mindset ∼ typified by the green left ∼ eclipsed the hopeful, often utopian, spirit of the Vietnam years, violence came to seem not merely permissible but necessary, given the perceived enormity and urgency of the stakes.

As a result, the unrestrained aggressiveness of social media spilled from the screen into the street, its rhetorical assaults readily hardening, once enacted in the public square, into the real thing.

Already evident in Extinction Rebellion’s massively disruptive protests, those currents have, in the recent demonstrations, metastasised.

Supercharging their force ∼ and the threat they pose ∼ is the alliance between the far left and radical Muslims whose virulent antisemitism, contempt for liberal democracy and repudiation of Australian institutions imports a jihadist logic that prizes confrontation over coexistence.

Caught between that reality, a commitment to an ill-defined, entirely ahistorical right to protest and the High Court’s ever-changing jurisprudence, governments have struggled to respond.

Although circumstances are nowhere near as dire, historian Detlev Peukert’s judgment of the Weimar Republic’s failure to master street violence rings shockingly true: The republic oscillated between impotence and over-reaction: either constitutional scruples paralysed it, or emergency powers hollowed out its legitimacy.

That is precisely where we now stand — for here too, as with the shibboleths of multiculturalism and of Indigenous self-determination, we remain in thrall to the spent inheritance of a vanished age.

In the end, every liberal democracy, if it is to endure, must give its enemies enough rope to hang themselves — but not enough to hang others. Striking that balance demands a cold, hard view of the world as it is. We have adamantly refused to take it. Unless we open our eyes, it is only a matter of time before we are swinging in the wind.



. . . ‘OVER THERE ’ . . .

The Telegraph reports in breaking news this afternoon, Lord Mandelson has been arrested on suspicion of committing misconduct in public office. Elsewhere, an inquiry has heard that Valdo Calocane, the Nottingham killer who took the lives of three people in June 2023, was not sectioned after a previous violent attack because he was black.In the latest headlines the EU halts US trade deal over Trump tariffs chaos and BBC apologises for broadcasting N-word at Baftas. Zia Yusuf vows to ban burka and students blew up sheep with fireworks.


Maria Ka

rootsworld writes in the High Middle Ages, Hildegard of Bingen said that "The truly holy person welcomes all that is earthly." William Blake declared in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) that "Exuberance is beauty." In 1855, Walt Whitman published the poem "Song Of Myself, 51" in Leaves of Grass, which contains the famous line "I am large, I contain multitudes." Which brings us to Polish artist Maria Ka's latest album Di Mashin (The Machine). Ka found that her family had Jewish roots, a discovery that led her to an immersion in Jewish studies and the Yiddish language. She unreels original songs written in Yiddish, embracing a politically active feminism and a committed meta-universality. Her musical vision is fragrantly mystical and musically all encompassing. Lee Blackstone visits hew new Yiddish cosmos


You won't hear it anywhere else!


Sam Sifton in The New York Times asks is the United States about to wage war on Iran? American forces have taken positions across the Middle East, with two aircraft carrier groups and dozens of fighter jets, bombers and other planes poised within striking distance of the country. President Trump said Friday he might use them in a limited strike to pressure Iran to end its nuclear program. Trump badly wants that deal, which his predecessors chased — and never realized. He blew up nuclear enrichment sites in Iran last year. In talks last week, he pushed Iran for an agreement but so far it has not assented. "Bad things will happen" if Tehran doesn't sign a deal, Trump said last week. "You're going to be finding out over the next probably 10 days." Now he has arrayed a force in the region to support a major conflict — one that could potentially last longer and be deadlier, than last year's 12-day war on Iran or the commando attack that removed Venezuela's president in January. Trump has told advisers that if an initial strike fails to move Iran to end its nuclear program, he may mount a bigger attack to drive its leaders from power.




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The Murrurundi Times is owned, compiled and written by Des Dugan. Email