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Anne writes a regular column for the Sydney Morning Herald, the leading metropolitan daily broadsheet in Australia's largest city. Click on the ... read more links to display the full text of each column in PDF format in a new window. Close the window when you've finished reading to return to this page. You will need Adobe® Reader® to read these files - if you don't have it, click here to download it for free. |
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Binge Drinking Something to Wine About If four glasses of wine enjoyed by adults over dinner is now going to be labeled binge drinking, we will need a whole new vocabulary to describe kids throwing down 24 vodka shots on a night out on the town. .. read more The Numbers Hillary Didn't Count On A lot of people, mostly men, just don't seem to understand why so many of us, and we are not all women, are so upset about the treatment of Hillary Clinton. It is not just because she lost, although of course many - myself included - wanted her to win. Nor are we suggesting, as some commentators have speciously suggested, she lost because she is a woman... read more The Trailblazer who opened his heart and mind to women's rights For the first 60 years of his life, Clyde Cameron, the former Labor Minister who died last week wrote, "I had accepted the teaching that to abort an embryo was the equivalent of murder." Then, not long after the vote on the Lamb-McKenzie bill, "something happened that caused me to see lawful abortion in another light. It was when a young Italian who had always letterboxed a part of my electorate returned his pamphlets; and, sobbing like a child, explained he could not do the job because his partner had died at the hands of a backyard abortionist in Hindley Street." "That tragic death caused me to understand that there are circumstances in which a decent, clean-living woman can be left with little choice but to have an abortion - especially if her partner, as is too often the case - insists on it." .. read more It Seems Only Luck Can Save Her Now There is a story doing the rounds of New York City concerning a tied vote in one of the districts in the Democratic caucus in Nevada a few weeks ago. It being Las Vegas, a deck was produced and shuffled and the precinct captains were each invited to take a card. Barack Obama's captain drew a 10 of clubs and sat back smiling; then Hillary Clinton's captain took his: the queen of hearts. The former first lady won the district - and the state. Luck was a lady that night, but Clinton has been on a losing streak ever since. She has lost the past eight contests in the primary election battles, several by huge margins, and now has at least 100 fewer delegates committed to voting for her at the Democratic convention in Denver, Colorado, in August than her rival, Obama. .. read more A Sorry Way to Right a Terrible Wrong It;s been more than 10 years so it is now almost impossible for people like me to recall clearly the shock and the horror, the shame and the sadness we felt when we first read (or read about) Bringing Them Home the report of the HUman Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission into what was termed "the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families." .. read more Room with a view or two - a homely taste of the future On December 11 last year when many Australians were engaged in the relentless round of pre-Christmas parties, others were flexing their political muscles in an innovative and perhaps ground breaking exercise in political activism. .. read more Labor's Women of Power Turn a Page in Politics I am told that Senator Penny Wong had quite a fan club at the UN in Bali. The various European Union delegations were openly enthused about her performance, while one young woman, a climate campaigner from Greenpeace China, was thrilled to receive a smile when she passed Wong in a corridor. Wong's impressive .. read more Strip Clubs - big for businessmen, not for business No one, it seems, is ready to step up and condemn Kevin Rudd for visiting a New York strip joint while on official business observing the UN four years ago. After all, Australians are pretty tolerant of people getting drunk and doing stupid things... read more SMH: JULY 26, 2007 Still ruling, the Golden Oldies Question: what do Tina Turner, Seamus Heaney, Ralph Lauren, John Cleese, Sir David Frost, and Francis Ford Coppola have in common? Answer: Like our prime minister, they all turn 68 this year. And, again like John Howard, they are all still working and, again like him, probably don't feel ready for the scrap heap yet. ... read moreBook Review SMH: JULY 21-22, 2007 All Hail, the demander-in-chief The transformation of Hillary Rodham Clinton from small town Arkansas corporate lawyer to America’s First Lady to US Senator from New York to Democratic Party frontrunner with a real chance of becoming the 44th president of the United States is one of the most remarkable political narratives of the modern era. Child-care agreement gets back to valuing workers Union power comes in many forms and with all the recent brouhaha about alleged thuggish behaviour from officials in the construction and mining industries, it is good to see union efforts benefit some of Australia’s lowest paid, yet most important, employees ... read more Better the unions' lackey than Howard's bitch-boy Part of the reason for Kevin Rudd's remarkable ascension in the polls has been that since he became Labor leader he has acted as if he were already prime minister. Rudd was the opposite of Kim Beazley's "me too" politics. He jettisoned the Beazley "small target" approach and opted to occupy the centre stage. He set the agenda with policy initiatives: in education there were measures to improve numeracy and literary, and to attract students to science and maths; on the economy, to improve productivity and on communications, to roll out a national broadband network ... read more Down south, it's a totally different culture In Melbourne this week they were bleating about getting “only” $63 million extra for the arts in the state budget brought down on Tuesday. As we in New South Wales brace for what are likely to be swingeing cuts to the Arts in our budget, I found it salutary during a few days spent down south this week to experience the very different ways the two states approach arts and culture. Our government seems to see this sector as an irritating, even embarrassing, adjunct to the main game. ... read more The Bottom Line on Good Child Care The peace dividend of the 1990s put money or benefits into people's pockets, but John Howard's proposed human dividend seems designed just to make us feel good. The so-called "peace dividend" was a collateral benefit of the end of the Cold War that supposedly diverted money from defence spending into health, welfare and other tangible social benefits. Howard's catchphrase seems more designed to put a bow on the benefits that have flowed from the economic reforms of his 11 years of government. ... read more Spousal Arousal Like New Before It's nothing new for candidates for high political office in the US to have to come clean about something –their taxes, their health, their financial probity, their drug use, any and every aspect of their private lives. But the politics of disclosure is breaking new ground in the current US Presidential election because it is not just the candidates who are laying themselves on the media alter. The 2008 Election is already shaping up as the Year of the Spouse. Partners, too, it turns out, have plenty to unburden – and a far bigger role to play than in any previous election. ... read more Time to make the shoe fit MAXINE McKew's audacious bid to unseat the Prime Minister at the next election has ignited the political imagination and sparked speculation about the future of the former ABC broadcaster. "Maxine for PM" emails were flying round before she had even secured the nomination — let alone the seat. If she takes Bennelong, McKew will go down in history as the Howard slayer — but it is most unlikely she will ever end up in the Lodge ... read more The day that shook Howard's world The key to understanding the Prime Minister's extraordinarily intemperate remarks about US presidential hopeful Barack Obama last weekend is to remember that John Howard was in Washington DC on September 11, 2001. He was right at the epicentre of the emotional firestorm that engulfed US politics after the al-Qaeda attacks and that helped forge his relationship with George Bush, the rookie US President, whom he met for the first time the day before ... read more The Hillary machine builds momentum Within the next few weeks Senator Hillary Clinton is expected to announce the establishment of a presidential exploratory committee, the first step in her historic quest to become the first woman president of the United States ... read more What's the score with all those Poms? Is John Howard's proposed citizenship test going to be the Tampa of next year's federal elections? Is it going to be a case of "we will decide who comes here and the circumstances in which they can become a citizen"? There is, unfortunately, every sign that this was the Prime Minister's intention when he proposed what he called a "positive way of ensuring that newcomers are more fully integrated into Australian society" ... read more PM glosses over double standard In the same week that the federal Attorney General ordered books removed from a university library and the Defence Minister hand-annotated an official letter to a vice-chancellor suggesting a change to the history curriculum, the Prime Minister told us we had embarked on "a generational struggle for ideals of democratic freedom and liberty under the law" .... read more Ozone Man, a new rival for Hillary Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions may be about to encounter an unexpected obstacle in the form of Ozone Man, her husband's former vice-president Al Gore. .... read more Sadly, women are having to win back ground lost to Howard Janine Haines was one of the first women in Federal Parliament to not be afraid to speak up for her sex. She saw her role in public life as being partly to represent the interests of other women..... read more Government avoids the heavy artillery For anyone tempted to hink, or maybe hope, that the Government is losing its touch after ten years in power, the past week has provided a powerful refutation. And it's not just the Prime Minister's obvious (and appalling) wedge on the ACT legislation on gay civil unions..... read more New Language Barrier No Way to Build a Tolerant Society Andrew Robb has proposed that new citizens in Australia would "more quickly and effectively integrate into our Australian family" if they were to learn our language and "something about our history and heritage". Robb is a rookie parliamentary secretary, widely assumed to have been put into the Immigration and Multicultural Affairs portfolio to curb the inclinations of the minister, Senator Amanda Vanstone, to give a bit of stick to asylum-seekers. ... read more All Together Now I feel a strong sense of historical justice in the fact that it has been the successful effort to reverse the ban on RU486 that has brought women parliamentarians in Canberra out of the political closet ... read more True Voice of the Desperate Housewives At a small dinner in Sydney in the mid-1990s, the celebrated writer and feminist Betty Friedan, who died on Saturday, her 85th birthday, was asked how she characterised herself. She did not hesitate: "First, I am an American. Second, a Jew and thirdly, I am a woman." It was a remarkable repositioning of self-perception and priorities from the woman whose book The Feminine Mystique in 1963 changed the lives of millions of women around the world, but by then she had been largely spurned by the movement she helped found and had decided, or been forced, to move onto other issues ... read more Hillary's presidential remake leaves the Clinton heartland cold You might expect the political conversation among Democrats to be along the lines of "is Hillary electable" (given the preponderance of red states on the American political map) but I discovered during a recent visit to the US, many in her natural base have already washed their hands of her ... read more The last dab of Chanel Usually at airports my emotions hover at the anger end of the barometer, mostly ricocheting between outright rage and mere frustration as flights are delayed, gates changed or luggage fails to appear on the carousel. So I surprised myself recently at London's Heathrow Airport when I realised as I wandered round the shops of Terminal Four that what I felt was desolation, and grief. It was, I worked out, because I had no one to shop for. Usually I buy my mother's Christmas presents at Heathrow ... read more Mail-order insult shows women still lack respect from society Why is it that in Australia today the racial slur is seen as far more offensive than the sexual one? In July Bryan Fletcher was fined $10,000 and stripped of the captaincy of the South Sydney Rabbitohs for calling another player a "black c---". It was the "B" word that was deemed to be the insulting one.... read more Future of abortion hangs on landmark hearing For the first time in more than 20 years a medical practitioner has been charged under the NSW Crimes Act with unlawfully prosecuting a miscarriage ... read more |
Bagless ladies: the powerful new breed of politician You never see Condoleezza Rice carrying a handbag. Not for her, arguably the most powerful woman in the world, the traditional trappings of feminine encumbrance ... read more Prisoners of a nation's prejudices It was probably inevitable that Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton would make contact with Schapelle Corby. After all, Australia's two most celebrated women of crime have a lot of experiences in common ... read more Back to work, it seems, any way you can Will the federal government ever let us stop working? Now there's talk of raising the retirement age to 75. What if we want to stop?... read more Abbott's tale is grubbier than it seems Has Tony Abbott's media manipulation of the story of his reunion with the son he gave up for adoption 27 years ago irrevocably altered the terms of the debate on abortion? ... read more McPolitics is not a viable future As we all know, a week is a long time in politics, and between today and next Friday, when the Federal Labor caucus meets to elect its new leader, we bystanders can expect to witness the playing out of a wide spectrum of political scenarios ... read more Relief is also for our reputation Why has the world, and Australia in particular, responded so generously to the tsunami disaster relief efforts when other tragedies of even greater magnitude have not attracted the same support? ... read more Turning off politics is not an option For the sake of our political health Labor supporters should not disengage, although the temptation to do so is powerful ... read more Mao lies in prominence if not in state You can tell a lot about a country by the way it treats its embalmed former dictators, especially in China today where a political furore has broken out about Mao's body continuing to lie in Tienanmen Square ... read more Women's rights pushed back to the margin The defenestration of the Canberra femocrat by the Howard Government was inevitable so the only question is: why did it take the Prime Minister, John Howard, so long to dump the Office of the Status of Women? ... read more No silver or bronze in fight for the Lodge John Howard is no doubt hoping to blaze to electoral victory on the coat-tails of our Olympic team but instead he might find himself in a similar position to Malcolm Fraser, the last Liberal Prime Minister to be ousted in an election ... read more Women come in from the cold At the last election federal Labor leader Kim Beazley slipped out a women's policy two days before the election. Its centrepiece? A promise to remove the GST on tampons. There wasn't much to sell ... read more Labor leader's soap opera won't wash It's time for our federal leaders to rise out of the gutter and ascend to the policy podium. The past week's soap opera had a plot more worthy of Dallas than The West Wing: rumours of sex and violence swirl around Canberra ... read more Corralled back to the kids and kitchen Peter Costello's "one for the father, one for the mothers, and one for the country" is all about making it harder for mothers to have jobs and have kids. ... read more APRIL
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