Posts are in reverse chronological order. You can search by category or by topic using ‘MENU’ to find a particular piece.

• Organising around Parkinson’s: How is Australia doing? (4/11/2024)
• repurpose/ˌriːˈpəːpəs/ (2/21/2024)
• Australian poetry (11/29/2023)
• The Referendum on The Voice was good news (11/17/2023)
• Indigenous puzzles: John Tranter explains (10/31/2023)
• For the love of a cowslip (9/13/2023)
• Ted’s first toothbrush (8/29/2023)
• Words spoken at ceremony to commit the body of John Kerin, Sat. 15 April 2023. (5/3/2023)
• John Kerin: Obituary from a staffer “The best policies are the best politics”. (5/3/2023)
• John Kerin – a personal reflection (3/30/2023)
• The last train to Werribee (2/26/2023)
• Changing Leaders – In Australia it took 45 minutes (11/7/2022)
• Parkinson’s brings out the best – in other people. (8/26/2022)
• An alternative phonetic alphabet (6/16/2022)
• Election results: many wrongs can make a right (6/10/2022)
• Sadly, ‘regional’ policies are the enemy of rural areas (5/13/2022)
• Election coverage 2022: ridiculous questions, irrelevant answers (5/12/2022)
• Quiz: Word-Play alphabet (3/27/2022)
• Jacki Howe (3/26/2022)
• Polonius’ advice updated for ‘Digital Natives'[1] (2/25/2022)
• Vale Don Beer – family man, historian, sportsman and friend (2/7/2022)
• Crossing the floor in Parliament: drawing a long bow (11/29/2021)
• A New-Normal CityState is emerging in the Great Southern Land from the rubble of COVID-19. (10/9/2021)
• The Clayton’s but secret Covid national plan (9/28/2021)
• COVID vaccination: “The highest priorities are still not met – so let’s focus on new ones!” (9/6/2021)
• Vaccination: Accounting for the muddle (9/4/2021)
• Vaccine: Let’s not forget the first priorities (9/4/2021)
• Vaccinating Australia: insufficient urgency, too much choice? (9/4/2021)
• Covid – five things National Cabinet should agree (8/29/2021)
• Covid: there has been an ill-disciplined approach to vaccination priorities (8/29/2021)
• Vaccinating aged care staff: mismanagement by Scott Morrison’s government. (8/20/2021)
• The right answer to Jack’s question can help use all that AstraZeneca (8/20/2021)
• Covid 19 has revealed the weaknesses but also the importance of globalisation (8/19/2021)
• Making good use of the AstraZeneca in which we are ‘awash’ (8/18/2021)
• Preparing for an evaluation of Australia’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic – Part 3 (7/16/2021)
• Preparing for an evaluation of Australia’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic – Part 2 (7/14/2021)
• Preparing for an evaluation of Australia’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic (7/13/2021)
• Poor man’s orchid – please don’t eat the seeds (7/2/2021)
• A punter’s guide to the review of Medicare items and the impact on patients’ out-of-pocket costs (6/13/2021)
• Why does Victoria top the score? (5/29/2021)
• Stirring the plot while gritting one’s teeth – Part 2 (5/28/2021)
• Stirring the plot while gritting one’s teeth (5/28/2021)
• Decline in Fall (4/30/2021)
• Singing with a soft voice and a straight face (4/30/2021)
• ‘Picking winners’ for a new economy (3/12/2021)
• How Victoria Topped the Score (3/9/2021)
• Life transformed? (2/2/2021)
• Season’s greetings from 35 years ago (1/4/2021)
• On the nature of giving – and the giving of Nature (10/15/2020)
• Beneath Swan Lake (9/9/2020)
• Facebook is a friendly foreign country (9/8/2020)
• Ovid in a time of COVID: 19 timely quotes from the Roman poet – with dedications as appropriate. (8/31/2020)
• leanne@ruralhealth: the woman behind the email address (8/10/2020)
• Postscript (6/30/2020)
• Telehealth, demographic change – or both? (6/26/2020)
• Distinguishing Poetry, Verse and Doggerel (6/11/2020)
• One Health and Planetary Health (5/25/2020)
• Part 2: Dr Strangelove to coronavirus (5/4/2020)
• Politics and economics explained (4/25/2020)
• Explaining the COVID-19 modelling (4/10/2020)
• “Hi-Yo Silver!” (4/9/2020)
• COVID-19: Models and emotions (4/3/2020)
• Resilience and the Quiet Australian (2/11/2020)
• We are all feeling under the weather (1/12/2020)
• Lost souls at Christmas (1/10/2020)
• The scrummaging and music of the Rugby World Cup (11/7/2019)
• Visiting The Cedars* (9/15/2019)
• Follow 2019 TdF without losing sleep (8/7/2019)
• Before a ball is bowled – 1 August 2019 (8/2/2019)
• Boris’s Brexit blindness (7/27/2019)
• The deluge and drought of Australia’s health reform cycle (7/26/2019)
• On dizziness and cognition in Parkinson’s (6/20/2019)
• An eerie policy silence has descended (6/11/2019)
• Election 2019: making sense of miracles and Labor’s love lost (5/30/2019)
• Election: claims and counter-claims about budget cuts (4/29/2019)
• Out-of-pocket healthcare costs do include travel (4/15/2019)
• Fixing out-of-pocket healthcare costs: a distant dream! (4/4/2019)
• A (rather weird) trip to Parliament House (2/23/2019)
• Afternoon tea with James Fairfax (12/11/2018)
• Stay the course! Immigration and the case for improving politics rather than ignoring it (10/17/2018)
• A national, rural, political dream (9/21/2018)
• Access to health services: Medicare and financial means (9/17/2018)
• Too much talk of “drought”, and not enough about “water management” (9/6/2018)
• Unpicking the history and politics of drought policy in Australia (8/23/2018)
• Today’s drought gets on the agenda (8/22/2018)
• An “ambitious” call for a national rural health strategy (7/15/2018)
• Do the Government’s claims about its rural health strategy stack up? (7/15/2018)
• 123 years of argument for primary prevention in healthcare (6/24/2018)
• Solstice and Sunlight (6/21/2018)
• Bob Carr, Anthony Powell and me (6/19/2018)
• Progress on UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda (6/16/2018)
• Bloggs 1-63 with direct URL links (6/14/2018)
• Australia’s health research effort (6/5/2018)
• Paddling his own canoe: for Dane (5/24/2018)
• ANZAC Day in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire (5/19/2018)
• Stalking George Gently (5/19/2018)
• Just Loving It (Our theatrical holiday in the UK) (5/19/2018)
• NRL: a bird in the hand is worth 30% of what’s in the bush (3/19/2018)
• Rural and remote gaps in NDIS rollout (3/15/2018)
• Command and control (3/13/2018)
• Retiring slowly – Match report for Saturday 20 January 2018 (2/19/2018)
• Two-wheeler Kate: in praise of speech recognition software (2/16/2018)
• Much to report – September 2008 (1/30/2018)
• How Green Was My Lily & other terrible Fotopuns (1/14/2018)
• Obstructing the field – Alex Ross is out (1/11/2018)
• Marriage equality – a case study in too much democracy (11/18/2017)
• Lawrence’s daffodils (11/15/2017)
• Dear Scott, So you want to clearly understand about split infinitives? (11/10/2017)
• Rural people face high, unmeasured and increasing out-of-pocket health care costs (10/29/2017)
• Dual citizenship explained – by Duncan Kerr – in 1989!! (9/1/2017)
• “This was the most unkindest cut of all.” (Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2)[1] (8/14/2017)
• ‘Reasonable expectations’ of human services in remote communities (8/3/2017)
• On politics, paramedics and the Sunburnt Country (7/30/2017)
• For Bev Glover (7/2/2017)
• Lines in the trouser – Part Three (6/23/2017)
• A poem for the Winter Solstice (6/22/2017)
• Rural Generalism: One of the best games in town for rural health? (6/20/2017)
• Lines in the Trouser – Part Two (6/18/2017)
• Lines in the Trouser – Introduction and Part One (6/12/2017)
• The challenge for the National Rural Health Commissioner (6/8/2017)
• Drones: workers of the future? (6/1/2017)
• Surfing the ‘waves of health reform’ in Australia (5/31/2017)
• Reflections on retirement (4/19/2017)
• “Julia Gillard is not a liar” – written in April 2012 (4/12/2017)
• Adelaide Crows Women: next year can we police have the chorus too? (4/4/2017)
• Extracts from debate in House of Representatives on Bill to establish a National Rural Health Commissioner (NRHC) (3/21/2017)
• Quad bike accidents: “It’ll never happen to me” (3/17/2017)
• Comments on accepting Louis Ariotti Award for Excellence, 6 March 2001. (3/9/2017)
• Health advocacy needs to be more specific, less ‘motherhood’ (3/9/2017)
• The Art of Professional House Cleaning (2/24/2017)
• parkrun: healthy movement (1/24/2017)
• A jogger’s diary (1/17/2017)
• To market, to market, to buy a fat pig…two case studies of economic change (12/14/2016)
• Dreams of home: Beardy Street, Armidale (11/21/2016)
• Structural change in the economy: a real life and political issue (11/4/2016)
• Pounds, shillings and common sense (11/4/2016)
• Parliamentarians and the plebiscite (11/4/2016)
• On holiday with Anne Cahill-Lambert and (photogenic) Rod (11/2/2016)
• For good rural health we need good rural jobs (11/2/2016)
• On electoral ‘mandates’ and furphies (11/2/2016)
• “Look at the tyres!” (11/2/2016)
• Rolling over (10/6/2016)
• Fields of Gold: the 2016 AFL Grand Final (10/6/2016)
• The language of ‘health promotion’ (9/19/2016)
• An agenda for the Minister for Rural Health (8/17/2016)
• Submarines and greyhounds: industry policy with a heart (8/13/2016)
• Dear Dr Gillespie: Don’t narrow the rural health agenda (8/10/2016)
• A short economic history of Australia from 1945 to the present. (8/9/2016)
• Marriage equality and greyhounds (8/9/2016)
• Tour Defiance 2016 (8/1/2016)
• The tale of a cowslip (7/24/2016)
• Quad bike safety (7/20/2016)
• For Leanne Coleman’s birthday (17 July) (7/17/2016)
• Does the Brexit vote mean an end to the not-keeping-sheep industry under the CAP? (7/16/2016)
• English rugby: no longer Down Under (7/15/2016)
• How did rural people vote in the Federal Election? (7/6/2016)