opinion
editorial
editorial April 10, 2021
Scott Morrison says the issue is one of supply. If only the Europeans supplied our vaccines on time, the rollout would be on track. If only the states stopped hoarding vaccines. If only GPs administered the doses delivered to them. If only.
editorial April 3, 2021
“You have every right to come home,” the prime minister told the more than 30,000 Australians stranded overseas in December last year. He promised to get as many as possible – if not all – home by Christmas. In the months since, the numbers have hardly fallen.
editorial March 27, 2021
It is difficult to keep ahead of federal parliament’s cascade of scandals. Even for the prime minister, who has been dragged into this fray he so desperately wanted to keep at arm’s length. He is visibly flustered; perhaps he truly did not realise the rot went so deep. But ignorance is not an excuse, not for a leader of a country.
editorial March 20, 2021
The moment that has really followed Mathias Cormann into his role as secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development happened while he was still in opposition. It was 2011 and he was trying to frame the calamity of climate change as a cost-of-living issue.
editorial March 13, 2021
The joint statement describes it not as something new but something coming, something due to a people who have been waiting too long. “Today has been owed for 233 years,” it says. “233 years of violence, dispossession and deprivation. 233 years of deliberate silence. Today we commit to telling the truth.”
editorial March 6, 2021
The instinct of our country’s first law officer, when accused of a terrible crime, is to seek the advice of a lawyer, one renowned for his skill in defamation proceedings. To the media, the message is clear. And so the country waits, for days, for the cabinet minister to name himself.
editorial February 27, 2021
The prime minister says he didn’t know that Brittany Higgins had accused a colleague of sexually assaulting her. He says he didn’t know until February 15 this year, three days after a media inquiry came into his office. But he knows now. This is the moment when a leader would stand up, take responsibility and then face the questions that need to be answered. Instead Scott Morrison’s only concern, it seems, is to avoid at all costs any of this sticking to him.
editorial February 20, 2021
Bridget McKenzie says the Nationals are “very, very keen to make a positive, progressive contribution to the energy and emissions debate”. All the evidence to hand suggests this is not true.
editorial February 13, 2021
Eddie McGuire is not the end, as much as the AFL would like him to be. A culture as toxic as the one described in the report that finally ended his 22-year tenure as Collingwood president cannot be seeded and maintained by one man.
editorial February 6, 2021
Six months ago, Bob Brown launched a legal challenge many said would rival his storied campaign to save the Franklin River. If successful, the case would have invalidated Tasmania’s regional forestry agreement, which, like other such agreements around the country, is exempted from Australia’s key environmental law – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. This week, the Federal Court ruled against Brown and his foundation. Tasmania’s agreement will hold.
editorial January 30, 2021
Sometimes people end up where they belong. This is not how Tony Abbott became prime minister but it is how he found himself working at the Institute of Public Affairs. That a man can go from leading the country to making Facebook videos for a right-wing think tank is evidence of the great lack in our politics.
