We go into Xmas carrying the haunting images of the Bondi Beach massacre

We go into Xmas carrying the haunting images of the Bondi Beach massacre and facing I think the most difficult decision the nation has had to make since John Curtin brought the troops back home over 70 years ago in WW2. But is our Government up to it? The only early indication I see is that Anthony Albanese actually used the word "antisemitism" this week without following it immediately with "Islamophobia", breaking a three-year trend (a fair bit of money changed hands in the Canberra Press Gallery after that I can tell ya). Here is where we are Australia. In the last 40-50 years thousands of immigrants – well tens of thousands really – have entered our country, making it clear that they absolutely hate us, that they intend doing all they can to undermine and demean our way of life, that they will publicly taunt us and deliberately confront us and that, in the end, they intend to overthrow our Government. We are, however, in a unique situation where we actually know who the enemy is. We know where they meet to peddle this vile anti-Western invective. We know the people who are preaching this unyielding hatred – nobody is hiding it – it's all there, easy to see. So here is the question for us to face Australia: what are we going to do about it?

There's something wrong with talking about the radio ratings on the same page as the tragedy at Bondi, but there we are... It's the nature of news, I guess. The AM Big Boy 2GB goes into the new year as the number one station overall, in breakfast and in mornings. Indeed, Mark Levy has had his best figures in the 9-12 zone since taking over from the legendary Hads. SMOOTH FM is still pretty strong in second spot, leading KIIS but the last survey of the year hasn't really given us any clear leads on where the industry is going.

It's 99 years since the "Great British Disappearance". It lasted just eleven days but held the UK, and indeed many parts of the world, spell bound. Police launched the biggest nationwide manhunt in history, thousands of volunteers searched fields and forests for hundreds of miles. A group of leading London businessmen even hired a European Psychic... But the mystery remained: The Queen of crime fiction, one of the most famous women on the planet, Agatha Christie, was not to be found. She had vanished from the face of the Earth. Mrs Christie had sped off in her car from her Berkshire home on the night of December 3, 1926, after a blazing row with husband, Col. Archie Christie, who'd told her he was seeking a divorce and going off to live with his lover. The hunt went into full swing after police found her car, crashed into a hedge, the motor still running and a packed suitcase left behind in the back seat. Special teams immediately started searching local rivers – not a good sign. Households across the UK were captivated, millions held their breath waiting on the latest update. The story was momentous. We're talking about Agatha Christie here, author of "Death on the Nile", "Murder on the Orient Express" and -– in later years – "The Mousetrap", the most celebrated whodunit in theatre history (it opened in 1952 and is still running in London today). For over a week the drama went on, intensifying each day, until the staff at the Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire, noticed that a South African visitor, who arrived eleven days earlier, looked remarkably like the famous missing writer. When police were called they too noticed something quite strange... The name of the mysterious South African hotel guest was listed as Theresa Neale, the same name as Col. Christie's lover. It was finally coming together just like a good detective novel should. Miss Neale actually turned out to be the most sought after person in the country, Agatha Christie. She moved immediately into her sister's home where she stayed behind closed doors, until heading off for a long holiday in the Caribbean. When she returned, Agatha Christie simply continued where she left off, only with a new husband. She resumed her famous writings and was interviewed hundreds and hundreds of times around the world – in the press, on radio and on TV – but never spoke of the incident again. To my knowledge no one even asked her about it. The Great Disappearance had simply disappeared.





A family member, a tradie, was recently talking to a supplier, just wondering how the year had been, only to learn that 2025 was "pretty ordinary", with sales down 8.5% for the twelve months. And this was general, right across the nation: business was extremely sluggish. This trade insider was really worried about the future, especially from 2030-35 on because all the trends were negative. These are his worries about the future. MOST BUSINESS IS BEING GENERATED BY THE GOVERNMENT. The private sector is going in the opposite direction. Most economists agree that we need a buoyant private sector to generate jobs out there at the coalface, especially in the small-business sector. And he argues that this process is insidious, you don't always realise it's happening. For example, in the case of our family tradie who works for a company which services major building firms mainly doing huge multi million dollar jobs. The insider pointed out that the majority these big jobs are coming from the Government at the moment so the companies doing the work are virtually Canberra or state employees which means the firms dependant on them, eg. our family tradie, are virtually on the Government payroll. These are technically private operators who are almost totally dependant on the taxpayer as well.

Also A LOT OF JOBS GROWTH IS NOW IN THE FEDERAL OR STATE PUBLIC SERVICE. Private industry isn't robust enough to need more employees. Many areas are lucky to be treading water. This is not a good trend. Ok, it's just a conversation between two blokes in the building industry but their concerns are general and echoed right across the country.

Got a hell of a shock recently when looking at our food bill to find that an apple cost us $1. That's for ONE APPLE! Our food prices are part of a national scam perpetrated by the supermarkets. We need to stop this in its tracks. Clearly our alleged Governments are incapable of doing so. Here's what we need to do Australia. Collar your local MP as soon as possible and tell them that you're giving them six months to sort the whole thing out. After six months you will expect to be getting three apples for $1 with similar reductions in all the food aisles. The message will be simple, to every MP, "If we're not getting apples for 30c each after six months we will be voting you out of office... Goodbye-ski. You'll find yourself out here with the rest of us looking for a real job."

I love our bizarre, strange sense of humour down-under. I was watching the test cricket in ADELAIDE recently when a cameraman fixed on to the England supporters... The Barmy Army was there chanting away and in the background there were four visitors from the old country decked out perfectly in the old Beatles gear, straight off the cover of one of the Fab Four's albums. There they were, lined up on TV – John, Paul, George and Ringo – and one of the Aussie commentators (it might have been Mark Waugh) takes a look and observes drily, "Oh, look at that... The Wiggles."

I AM AUSTRALIA

We are one but we are many,
And from all the lands of Earth we come,
I am, you are, we are Australian

The Seekers, 1995. (By Bruce Woodley and Dobe Newton)