Cutting through the crap
The Coalition want to talk about the past or the future but never the present. Here are a few details from this year’s budget. Net […]
Politics
Having a go
It made my heart sing last night to hear Emma Alberici tell Mathias Cormann a few home truths in one of the best interviews I […]
Fluffy figures, flawed calculations, false expectations.
Fair, reasonable and balanced. That has been Tony Abbott’s latest pre-budget mantra, a mantra that took a hiding after Joe Hockey delivered what will surely […]
Et tu, Scott?
Considering how smug Scott Morrison is looking lately, it is somewhat ironic that it was Joe Hockey that gifted him his first government “snout in […]
An Open Letter to Joe Hockey
Dear Joe Hockey, I am writing to you about your announcement on Mother’s Day that you’re going to deprive 80,000 working mothers from the government […]
Tony Abbott – a man of principle and conviction?
Tony Abbott’s timeline on paid parental leave 2002 In 2002, Tony Abbott’s hostility to paid parental leave reached a crescendo, when he declared to the […]
Pity the Climate Change Denialist
By Ben Clark I pity Maurice Newman. For one thing, his conspiratorial rants are beginning to have the distinct hysterical tone of delusion, sounding much like […]
What went wrong for UK Labour?
Through my study of political narratives I’ve learned many interesting things. But the one most important lessons is that a political narrative has to be […]
My Thoughts on the Week That Was
Author’s note: I have decided to convert what was my ‘A Month in Politics’ post into a weekly commentary: ‘My Thoughts on the Week […]
What will it take for the Greens to be ‘mainstream’?
After today’s shock Greens leadership change, new leader Richard Di Natale has been quoted as saying he wants the Greens to be ‘the natural […]
Abbott and Hockey Running Scared
A week or so out from Joe Hockey’s second attempt at bringing down a national budget, what are we hearing? Not much. It will be […]
Wise words from Tony Windsor
“When I was young I thought South Africa would always be apartheid. I never thought the Berlin Wall would come down. I thought Russia would […]
The sequel to the Little Book of Big Labor Waste
When Jamie Briggs penned The Little Book of Big Labor Waste in the lead up to the last election he really nailed Julia Gillard for […]
Premature congratulation
The Abbott government suffers from a bad case of premature congratulation. We have had a parade of Hockey, Cormann, Frydenberg, Abbott and others telling us […]
Curing Outrage Fatigue
I agree with Tim Dunlop when he says we’re currently living through a phase of ‘the normalisation of bad politics’. There are hundreds of […]