With one-in-two people dying within days of becoming ill, it’s little wonder that Ebola causes panic. But the real threat can only be assessed if we understand the history of the virus and how it is transmitted In 1980, the year I started my clinical studies, the World Health Organization announced that smallpox, one of...

When “Howard’s battlers” defected from Labor in 1996, political commentators shifted their focus to Sydney’s western suburbs. But what if the whole idea was founded on a misreading of the data? The spectre of a major political party “losing its base” is popular in political commentary. It’s usually applied to the Labor Party, but in...

No arguments seem to sway right-wing politicians and commentators in the United States and Australia. Will we have to wait for demography to do its work? The abolition of the carbon tax has raised, yet again, the question of how to convince those on the political right to accept mainstream climate science and the need...

John Howard’s gun buyback scheme had more than one benefit Did the buyback save lives? As someone with a connection to two of Australia’s worst gun massacres, I’ve always been interested in finding out. But the public debate seemed frustratingly simplistic. Some anti-gun campaigners described firearms owners as “gun nuts,” and seemed to have difficulty...

Labor and the Coalition are caught between vying for the middle ground and differentiating themselves in the political marketplace. Behind it all, there’s one vital difference If a new poll reflects opinion across the electorate then we are in the midst of a disturbing spike in public disaffection with Australian political parties and the political...