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politics May 21, 2022
What happens if you win the election?
Whoever wins this election, Australia’s next government will face enormous challenges across the full spectrum of foreign and domestic policy. But the arsenal of policy tools available to the incoming government will have been undermined after...
politics May 21, 2022
Now that election day has finally arrived, it’s reasonable to ask: How much better informed are voters to make their choice? The campaign has certainly been neither a contest of policy ideas, nor of visions for our country’s path ahead. Despite the...
politics May 21, 2022
Expectations of a Labor victory today have been trimmed dramatically. Far from the landslide many were increasingly confident of just a week ago, forming a minority government is now widely seen as the best they can expect. The possibility of Scott...
politics May 14, 2022
Independents are the shock the major parties need
The former British prime minister Harold Macmillan may never have said, “Events, my dear boy, events”, in response to the question of what made the job of prime minister difficult or pushed governments off course. Nonetheless, it expresses a truism...
politics May 14, 2022
Whether or not Scott Morrison can engineer the miracle of his second coming on May 21, he will leave significant negatives in terms of the Liberal Party and public policy in our country. The standard of political debate, and the respectability and...
politics May 14, 2022
Scott Morrison is desperately looking to generate a last-minute momentum shift in this election, but Anthony Albanese believes it is already occurring around the kitchen tables of the nation. The Labor leader’s cautious optimism can be summed up in...
economy May 7, 2022
Reality television for the smart kids
Last Saturday I was attending a dinner to celebrate John Coates’ 32-year term as president of the Australian Olympic Committee. With no disrespect, my mind wandered off a little during a line of high-profile speakers. The governor-general, alongside...
politics May 7, 2022
Why the days of safe Liberal seats are almost over
Here is one truth about this election: the Liberal Party is risking its future on a prime minister who likely doesn’t have one. After years of neglect, it should come as no surprise that many Liberal voters would be looking for an alternative. What...
politics May 7, 2022
Every galah in every pet shop in Australia
This week, the Reserve Bank of Australia played itself into the federal election campaign in a way we haven’t seen for 15 years. Whatever the impact of its 0.25 percentage point rate rise on Tuesday – the first in more than 10 years – it is...
defence April 30, 2022
Everything is going up, except Morrison’s chances
With three weeks to go, one thing is crystal clear: this is not a re-run of the 2019 election campaign for Scott Morrison. The prime minister is at best treading water; a more apt description might be that he is taking it. What we have seen in the...
economy April 30, 2022
Morrison focuses on the economy at the expense of workers
The essence of Scott Morrison’s so-called marketing strategy for the election campaign is to attempt to control the narrative by creating doubts and even fear about the alternatives. Hence the themes “who do you trust to manage the economy?” and “...
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