Peter is the former national president of the National Civic Council and on the News Weekly editorial team.
COVER STORY Hazelwood closure will push up power prices in Victoria
The foreshadowed closure of the Hazelwood power station in Victoria, which generates around a quarter of the state’s base-load power, will remove one of the low-cost electricity producers in the state, push up electricity prices, and make Victoria vulnerable to power disruptions like the recent blackout in South Australia. Hazelwood is one of three brown…
FOREIGN AFFAIRS Obama Administration exacerbates Syria conflict
Having stoked the Syrian conflict for the past four years by arming the so-called “moderate rebels”, the Obama Administration is compounding its error by encouraging Turkey, Syria’s hostile neighbour, to become involved militarily inside Syria. There can be no doubt that by providing military support to anti-government rebels, and repeatedly demanding that Syria’s President Assad resign, the Obama Administration, and Secretary of State John Kerry in particular, encouraged the civil war, at the same time that the United States launched aerial bombing against al Qaeda and ISIS military targets in northern Iraq and Syria. Bashar al Assad No one is…
Cardinal rebuts commission’s ‘Get Pell’ campaign
The credibility of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has been tainted by a submission by counsel assisting that repeats unsustainable allegations of cover-up by Cardinal George Pell. The Cardinal rebutted the allegations systematically, both in torrid cross-examination last March and more recently, through his legal counsel. His evidence has been supported by other submissions to the royal commission. Cardinal George Pell While the submission by counsel assisting has been widely reported in the media, the responses of Cardinal Pell and others who know the facts have been ignored, suggesting either that someone “leaked” the submission,…