Guy Rundle

“With only occasional exceptions – someone like Clive Palmer – the working hypothesis of the gallery is that every political actor is rationally self-interested and transparent to themselves in their motives and desires. They could get away with this …”

“As market capitalism has become monopoly capitalism – markets without competition – the potential capacity to see beyond it becomes ever greater. In a society benighted by privatisation, people can begin to see again what they had forgotten: that …”

“For the first time in decades, large numbers of people are willing to think of the state’s role in the economy as being something more than an enabler of private capital, a limited safety net and corporate regulator.”

“With both Abbott and Latham seemingly determined to alienate as many as possible who had supported or believed in them, the start and end points of their parabolic rise and fall neatly contain a period of Australian history in which we lost belief that …”

With the gutting and offshoring of Western industrial capitalism, the class order has been reversed. Knowledge production is at the centre of our economy and culture, and the industrial working class are, by contrast, multiply diminished.

“Those outside the progressive class have held on for a decade or more waiting for real recognition of their demands. Denied it, a chunk of them broke off and voted Trump into power. ”

“Properly curated, Sydney and Melbourne could preserve their high standard of living. Extrapolating current trends, they will become sinks of inequality, blight and obliterated heritage.”

“People have had enough of being courtiers for Liberal whims or a distant and self-satisfied Labor elite. Any seat where NXT and the Greens can share 30-40 per cent of the vote between them will be in play.”

“Labor and the Liberals are eager to deny that they have a program of any comprehensive sort. Both parties appeal to depoliticised notions of competence.”

“There was an emotional decadence at the heart of the Abbott government, a result of its attempt to project its right-wing fantasies onto a country that no longer felt defined by them. ”

“Extended education, longer retirement and the creation of a permanent benefits class have hidden the great shift. With Uberisation and automation that will rise to the point where it can no longer be ignored.”

“We have reached the point where all the key roles in both chambers of parliament are occupied by former student politicians. These are people who have had almost no job but politics.”

“To win the election, the Tories were willing to test the Union to destruction, effectively throwing the Scots out before they had left, on the basis of who they chose to vote for.”

“Of the prosperous OECD countries, we are one of the least innovative, locked into old arrangements that are proving increasingly inadequate to a better life.”

Voters in the US are panicked about external threats, but suffering much closer to home from big-money domestic politics.

“There is one general rule about weak and struggling right-wing governments: the formula that served them well for decades no longer works.”

The recent raft of clangers from the government frontbench betrays their disconnect from ordinary lives.

“Every mobile phone sales rep in every shopping mall booth understands what Palmer is doing better than the people he and his party are dealing with in the senate.”

“It’s a form of political nihilism ... We’re being governed as if we were a student union that had been captured by a clique.”

George Brandis and his ideological wingmen are leading the government to a spectacular defeat on 18C.

Who will rise to the challenge of defending the public sector and a progressive system?