This article is reposted with permission from the True Believers page on Facebook.
It is written by John Young, a Sydney barrister. In the 1970s and 1980s, he worked for Lionel Bowen, deputy leader of the Labor Party. Bowen was a minister in the Whitlam government and Deputy Prime Minister in the Hawke government until 1990.
I am John Young, one of the founders of the True Believers page on Facebook.
In 1979, I was working as Private Secretary to Lionel Bowen, then Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, when a National Party MP, Stephen Lusher, moved a motion in the House of Representatives to restrict the payment of medical benefits for terminations of pregnancy.
In 1979, the House of Representatives was comprised entirely of men. The Coalition was in government and many Australians, particularly women, feared that the Lusher motion would be carried. [Read more...]


Mr MURPHY (Reid) (16:33): On 11 June 2013, Mr Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation will hold a special meeting for shareholders to vote on amendments needed to authorise the company’s plan to break into two separate publicly traded entities, dividing its newspaper and book publishing assets from its television and film business. The publishing unit, which will retain the News Corporation name, will include Wall Street Journal owner Dow Jones and Mr Murdoch’s other newspapers, including the New York Post and The Australian. The film business will be called 21st Century Fox and includes News Corporation’s 39.1 per cent stake in BSkyB, the 20th Century Fox film and TV studio, the Fox broadcast network and cable channels including Fox News. The split will most likely take effect on 30 June 2013, the end of the company’s fiscal year. Mr Murdoch will serve as chair of both companies and the chief executive of 21st Century Fox, Robert Thomson, former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, will be chief executive of News Corporation. 