What a delightful, informative article.

Of course, I recall bits and pieces of the history. Thank you for putting them together and filling the gaps.

Murdoch's dead hand will continue to oppose anything that it does not control, especially anything with teeth, but what of his successors? Surely, his time will eventually come to an end.

The emerging New Matilda and Get Up! entities are all very much post-Whitlam era and add spice to the stew, as also various fact-checking sites and activist blogs of all kinds. Consider also Crikey, The Guardian and the many foreign news sources, most of which are beyond the reach of Australian regulators.

My guess is that the coming 40 years will result in no more substantive progress than the past 40, but I am not by nature an optimist.

There is truth in the phrase "The more things change, the more they stay the same".

The most valuable voice in the room is often the dissenting one! If two people the boss and his/her underling share the same view, one of you is clearly redundant!

Why is it, that folk with a peculiar right wing, white wing, my way or the highway, view of the world cannot tolerate dissent?

And anyone to the centre of them, automatically labeled left wing!

As if their favorite label for more progressive folk still actually meant something!

In today's world there clearly is neither a left or right, just up or down good or bad; or intolerance and indifference opposed to modernism and progress!

Newspapers with their massive influence through the use of opinion pieces and editorials need far more transparency and independent fact checking!

Least we follow Russia and Turkey where freedom of the press is both illusionary and a joke!

Those who mold public opinion need to be held to account for the stories they print and the important need to know information they knowingly withhold!? To the detriment of the nation!? A sane AFFORDABLE energy policy and thorium e.g? Not a peep, let alone an in depth, impartial pros and cons analysis!
Alan B.

Alan B,

You dub some people as "peculiar right wing", then do a flip and assert that "In today's world there is clearly neither a left or right wing". You are contradicting yourself! And, how can anyone be "to the centre" of someone else?

Yes I do say there's neither a left or right just progressives and their counterparts who we would have once called Tories, as the right and various other descriptions. And exclusively applicable to those who still believe in the master severnt complex and are crippled by a superiority complex and right to rule mindset?

And would eliminate elections or democracy if that were possible?

Take Dutton with his border force, a prime example, I believe, of a power junkie of the far right. And only possible to label him and his ilk thus, given they see anyone in the moderate middle, i.e., most of us, as left leaning revolutionaries!/commies?

That's what's wrong with the coalition, too many, power for its own sake obsessives and too few fair dinkum liberals able to genuinely put the nation ahead of rank, party political/personal considerations.

One can level the same critique of irrational sections of labor and the loony tune greens?

That said, I stand by my comment of there being no genuine right or left wing just up or down good or bad policy! And applicable to the broader scope of most political parties of the centre!

It's the old divide and rule promise them anything politics that's an anachronism from the past, which still can be described as left or right, and as such generally occupying the extremes of both?

And as such stuck in a timewarp 18th century bubble, in every sense save the actual chronological one?

No conflict here? unless you're mindlessly nitpicking and for its own sake!
Alan B.

So, you are going to continue contradicting yourself. It takes all sorts.

Are you being deliberately obtuse ttbn? No contradiction here just ralavency. Our conservatives are very different from their UK counterparts, as are swing to the right, new Labor, who have to a generic man accepted climate change, SSM and nuclear power.

So had to label our conservatives as being from the right, which exists as in a timewarp here, in one of the least advanced of the advanced countries! And we are paying for it! With them the exceptions that prove the rule! And understood by reasonable intelligent people who aren't simply arguing for the sake of it?

The energy crisis, unaffordable housing ,massive domestic and foreign debt! And a parliament of troglodytes screaming abuse across the isle, who wouldn't look out of place in one of Charles Dickens novels?

Absolutely bereft of vision or new ideas, but like wind them up robots, limited to their ideological programing and unimaginative old and crusty policies/ideas.

It's all theatre and one-upmanship! And typical of left/right politics of yesteryear. Where the only thing more important than winning is not losing!

So let me qualify my earlier remarks and say, among intelligent reasonable people there is no left or right just good or bad policy.

And means if it's good policy it can't be simply rejected because it allegedly came from the wrong side of politics.

That's all I'm saying ttbn. How's that? Clear enough for even you to understand? It's not applicable to people, just their ideas!

Even if those limited in their view, who choose to be bloody minded and pedantic or too thick to understand where i'm coming from; and are so limited in the usual nuances, they need it all black and white and literal! And it's not!

And God help us, these are the same drongos who decide all elections, and the one Lincoln referred to when he said, you can fool some of the people all of the time!
Alan B.