David Fagan

Freelance Contributor at Freelance

Author Has The Luck Run Out?, plays and follows music, used to run newspapers and digital progeny. Advises others, director of Carers Qld, QMusic and the Ekka

Articles

Labour at a fiscal crossroads

1 week ago | palatinate.org.uk | David Fagan

By David FaganThis article was written prior to the Spending Review announcementOn 11th June, Chancellor Rachel Reeves will deliver her first multi-year Spending Review, a defining moment for Labour’s economic strategy. Ms Reeves, no stranger to difficult fiscal decisions, must now decide which manifesto promises to fund and which to shelve.
Badenoch Struggles Through PMQs

Feb 27, 2025 | palatinate.org.uk | David Fagan

By David FaganLeading a weakened Conservative Party into opposition after fourteen years of government was never going to be easy. More than 100 days into her leadership, Kemi Badenoch is facing increased scrutiny after a series of poor performances at Prime Minister’s Questions. PMQs is an opportunity for Ms Badenoch to challenge Sir Keir Starmer by raising policy issues, exploiting his weaknesses and positioning her party as a credible alternative.
Paris showed how great the Games are. Brisbane's chance awaits

Aug 13, 2024 | thenewdaily.com.au | David Fagan

Paris has done its job. We’re all bleary-eyed from early morning gold but in a better mood, helped in Brisbane by a sunny start to the Ekka where the smiles (even in the rain) match the hopes we should now have for our own Games. The Paris Olympics (with the Paralympics still to come) have been a showpiece – not just for Australia but the world that has put its angst on hold for 10 days to turn its attention to sports rarely recognised and, in some cases, pretty well unheard of.
Small twists, large turns gap between democracy and anarchy

Jul 16, 2024 | thenewdaily.com.au | David Fagan

Just 0.02 per cent. A tiny, tiny proportion but the degree of error or fortune that spared both Donald Trump and the world facing an entirely different outlook this week. That tiny proportion empowers a defiant Trump to continue to face down the forces that a large, large proportion of Americans think are arraigned against him. And them.
If this is Peter Dutton’s warm and fuzzy side, why all the arrogance?

Jun 25, 2024 | thenewdaily.com.au | David Fagan

Peter Dutton pledged last year we would see a different side of the abrasive and unforgiving characteristics needed to accompany the tough guy portfolios he’d occupied over a decade of ministerial office. Instead he’s shown us an even more arrogant streak, unaccompanied by either necessity or authority. Pity, because that other side exists even if it’s too rarely visible.
Why Murdoch thinks he’ll live long – and the plans to prove it

Jun 4, 2024 | thenewdaily.com.au | David Fagan

Few people sign up to lifetime commitments in their 60s, 80s or 90s. Murdoch has done all three. In life, like business, Murdoch has belief that things can last forever – or at least a very long time. His serial “groomsmanship” is evidence of that. As evidence, here’s a reflection from one of my personal interactions with Murdoch while editing his Queensland newspapers. This one happened in the boardroom of The Courier-Mail offices in Bowen Hills, a rare visit necessitated by an urgent decision.
Get comfy, Jim Chalmers has a mighty story to tell

May 13, 2024 | thenewdaily.com.au | David Fagan

Federal budgets are as much about story-telling as about balancing columns of figures and hundreds of pages of program statements. I went to about 30 lockups for budgets or mini-budgets before I gave up on them a decade or so ago and it remains the stories the treasurers of the day – Keating, Costello and Swan – told about where the country was going that stand out.
I was clinically dead after a heart attack. This is what I learnt

May 9, 2024 | thenewdaily.com.au | David Fagan

It took only a day or two after I had died for well-meaning journalist friends to ask the question you’d expect. “So you went to the other side,” they asked. “What was there?”My response disappointed them and was less certain than the one Kerry Packer gave a few decades ago. Mine was: “I don’t know because I don’t remember a thing.
Beware angry voters – always peeved, but never sure about what

Apr 2, 2024 | thenewdaily.com.au | David Fagan

The little obstacles of life are the irritants to remind testy voters of the many ways government at all levels just doesn’t work for them. A drive back from the Brisbane Valley at the weekend was such a reminder for this testy voter, contemplating just 200 days and a week or so until a state election at which voters appear to be waiting with baseball bats. Roadworks are flavour of the month on the main highway between Fernvale and the main road at Ipswich.
On the history of Portuguese /u, ēi/: The case for spontaneous diphthongization

Feb 29, 2024 | dialnet.unirioja.es | David Fagan

On the history of Portuguese /u, ēi/: The case for spontaneous diphthongizationAutores: David S. FaganLocalización: Word: Journal of the International Linguistic Association, ISSN-e 2373-5112, ISSN 0043-7956, Vol. 43, Nº 3, 1992, págs.