Writer
Tony Smith
Dr Tony Smith is a former political science academic with interests in elections, parliament and political ethics.
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TONY SMITH. Hopes End: the cynics must not prevail
Dear Prime Minister Turnbull Congratulations on your election success. Two years ago very few observers believed the Coalition Government deserved another term so you have a personal achievement of which you can be proud. While you were busy campaigning, I distracted myself by reading Coral Lansbury’s Sweet Alice. * What an enjoyable read that Continue reading »
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TONY SMITH. A major madness
It is only the most naive among us who equate democracy with majoritarianism. The ‘Brexit’ plebiscite certainly returned a majority in favour of Britain leaving the European Union, but the distress caused by the decision shows that the plan is far from the ideals of democracy. Democracies behave moderately. They demand a degree of Continue reading »
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Tony Smith. There is a hole in my heart where NITV News used to be
There are times when the rhetoric about ‘closing the gap’ between Indigenous Australians and the rest of the population sticks in the throat. This week I turned on my preferred television news source – the 5.30 bulletin on National Indigenous TeleVision (SBS4) – and found that it had disappeared. The ‘gap’ refers to the statistics Continue reading »
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Tony Smith. Wasting money on domestic violence?
The implementation of most Government policies requires some kind of expenditure. One of the laziest approaches an Opposition can adopt is to cite slogans about cost. This sloganeering is at its most shallow when arguing that the Government is just ‘throwing money at the problem’. Needless to say, there are occasions when this criticism is Continue reading »
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Tony Smith. Baird’s risk on asylum seekers
When New South Wales Premier Michael Baird told an Australia Day luncheon that we should be more accepting of asylum seekers, he was taking quite a risk. Baird’s federal Liberal Party colleagues have espoused the hard policy of stopping the boats which the Abbott Government declares is its greatest achievement. It is not unknown for Continue reading »
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Tony Smith. Our dubious talent as jailers
In 2004 I was a patient in the cardiac unit of RPAH Sydney. I had mysterious heart inflammation which turned out to be due to a rare auto-immune condition known as Churg-Strauss Syndrome, a form of vasculitis that raises the eosinophils in the blood to life threatening levels. In the next bed was an Indigenous Continue reading »
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Tony Smith. The failure of imagination
Australia has rushed to despatch even more armaments into the already troubled areas contested by men of violence across Iraq and Syria. It is clear that once again, our national government has assumed that this action is necessary and unavoidable. In reality, there are always choices and it is disappointing that the Coalition has failed Continue reading »
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Tony Smith. Dubious celebrations of war.
On 28 July 1914, the world was thrown into a terrible conflict. On that day, a Serbian nationalist assassinated an Austrian archduke and his wife. Because European states belonged to alliances which were heavily armed and many countries on other continents belonged to their empires, the war spread until it had consumed over a million Continue reading »
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Tony Smith. Singing out for asylum seekers.
Recent poll results that show rising support for the Abbott Government’s approach to border security are disturbing even if not entirely surprising. Asylum seekers have been detained offshore, out of general sight and conveniently out of mind for those Australians who prefer not to think about the issue, and the Labor Opposition has consistently failed Continue reading »
