Politics

Grubsheet has come under withering attack for its previous posting that exposed the apparent links between the so-called Fiji Democracy and Freedom Movement in Australia and indigenous extremists who staged the 2000 George Speight coup. Tempers in the diaspora of the disaffected who oppose the Bainimarama regime have been sorely frayed since we … [Read more...] about #THE CAMERA DOESN’T LIE

The Ukrainian Club in the New South Wales city of Queanbeyan - adjacent to Canberra - was the unlikely setting this weekend for the launch of what's being billed by its organisers as the most serious attempt thus far to dislodge the Bainimarama regime in Fiji. The star speaker was Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba Mara - the renegade Fijian military officer … [Read more...] about #28 UNHOLY ALLIANCE ON FIJI

A bizarre rerun of the political intrigues of the 19th century South Seas aristocracy is being played out at a stately royal residence on the waterfront of the sleepy Tongan capital, Nuku’alofa. Consular House was once the home of the British High Commissioner to Tonga and the lion and the unicorn still gaze majestically down from the wall in the … [Read more...] about #25 THE KING AND I : A PACIFIC INTRIGUE

It's inconceivable that in any other western democracy, a national leader would tolerate a cabinet minister behaving as a parallel figure on the world stage and actively undermining the whole edifice of government at home. Yet that's precisely what Australia's Julia Gillard is doing through her failure to crush the audacious come-back campaign … [Read more...] about #20 A NATION HOSTAGE TO ONE MAN’S EGO

Australia's impotence in influencing events in its own backyard is being demonstrated in dramatic fashion this week as the Fijian dictator, Frank Bainimarama, fulfils his long-held ambition to assume the chairmanship of the Melanesian Spearhead Group. All of the other Melanesian leaders - from Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Vanuatu plus the Kanak … [Read more...] about #18 CHAIRMAN FRANK’S PACIFIC COUP

The Australian Labor Party's worst election result in New South Wales in more than a century can't simply be written off as an enraged electorate taking its revenge on a corrupt and incompetent government. It's also the writing on the wall for federal Labor as its traditional support base of aspirational blue and white collar workers and … [Read more...] about #17 THE LIGHT ON THE HILL EXTINGUISHED