“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. ”