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Joel Deane
Joel Deane is a speechwriter, novelist and poet. He has worked in newspapers, television, politics, and internet startups in Australia and the United States. His latest novel is Judas Boys (Hunter, 2023).
Criticisms first. Kim Carr’s insightful yet evasive memoir, A Long March, reads more like a short march. As a key left factional leader in the Australian Labor Party for the best part of forty years, the former Victorian senator squibs on details. He doesn’t explain the subterranean workings of the ALP; doesn’t fess up on the genesis of his feuds with the likes of Julia Gillard, Kim Beazley, ... (read more)
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The internet, like its big sister, the electronic computer, is a Little Frankenstein of the Cold War – one of the countless bright ideas brought shuddering to life with the financial backing of the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the feverish aftermath of the launching of Sputnik, the world’s first man-made satellite, by the Soviet Union in 1957. And why did the US ... (read more)
Bill Hayden, the first Queensland policeman to lead a federal political party, wrote of his experiences as a constable – the violence, the squalor, the tragedy – in his autobiography, Hayden (Angus & Robertson, 1996), and concluded: ‘All of these led me to feel a great anger at the injustices some people had to bear.’ At one point, the former governor-general noted that h ... (read more)
While we are apart I willwear no shoes, walk barefootover Nevada sands, tune my heartto 33 kilohertz, synchronisemy inner ear to terra firma, and,
... (read more)
Why did Australia vote against the Voice referendum?
Alastair Campbell – former communications chief to former British prime minister Tony Blair – blames the media. Speaking on his The Rest is Politics podcast, Campbell likened Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s rogue interventions in the debate to the misinformation he saw in the Brexit campaign of 2016:
Dutton claimed the referendum wa ... (read more)
Michael Gurr was Victorian Premier Steve Bracks’s first senior speechwriter. I am his latest. Gurr worked for Victorian Treasurer John Brumby when he was leader of the state opposition in the mid-1990s. So did I. Gurr wrote the launch speeches for Steve Bracks’s successful 1999 and 2002 state election campaigns. As I type this review, I am also, coincidentally, in the midst of ballpointing my ... (read more)
And the world is fire.
And the sky wears a smoky veil.
And the bloodshot sun stares.
Can no longer comprehend the language
of the land –
... (read more)
The stumping of Jonny Bairstow reminded me of reaction chains. Bairstow, in case you didn’t waste winter nights watching the Ashes, was the English batsman controversially stumped by Australian wicketkeeper Alex Carey during the second Test at Lord’s. Pandemonium ensued, with the poohbahs of the Marylebone Cricket Club berating the Australian team during the lunch break as they filed through ... (read more)