Fellowship Dinners Australia

The crisis situation in Iraq has inevitably resulted in the assertion that it was inherently wrong for the United States led coalition in 2003 to have liberated that nation from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. This analysis has in turn led to an implicit, if not actual, opposition to the United States taking military action via air support for the Maliki government in Baghdad against the brutal fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Newspaper reports consistently describe the Victorian Independent MP Geoff Shaw, who has announced his intention to introduce a bill to outlaw partial-birth abortions, gender selection abortions, oblige doctors to administer pain killers to babies undergoing abortions, resuscitate any who survive, provide better information to mothers contemplating abortion and restore to doctors their right of conscientious objection, as a “maverick”.

It is imperative in a complex world that national leaders be neo-Bonapartists, i.e. independent political actors who are not captive to vested interests. A wide range of leadership examples is analysed by Dr. David Paul Bennett to convey the contemporary importance of neo-Bonapartism.

I hoped we’d be spared the image of Kevin Rudd’s church lych gate interviews this election round but no, there he is again, seeking “a bit of divine solace” at St John’s Church in Canberra (The Australian 15/8).

The unfortunate fall of the Gillard government probably places Australia back on course to becoming a rentier state with the exodus of moderates from the ALP. The question therefore emerges as to whether Kevin Rudd or Malcolm Turnbull will either allow or oppose Australia succumbing to rent-seeking.