Opinion
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Media June 25, 2022
Kevin Rudd
What Murdoch does to new governments
As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s new ministers settle in to their portfolios, efforts are already under way by the Murdoch media to undermine the government. Take, for example, their complete beat-up about Tanya Plibersek being “sidelined” …
Politics June 25, 2022
John Hewson
The Peter Dutton principle
While it is still early days, it is becoming clear that the Coalition and their media sycophants didn’t believe they would lose the election. They seem unprepared to move on. Beyond the immediate disappointment – both individually, for those who …
Environment June 18, 2022
Scott Ludlam
Why nuclear energy won’t work in Australia
There is something almost comical about the Liberals and Nationals throwing the forlorn spectre of nuclear power back into national energy debates, right after their loss in the 2022 “climate election”. The incoming Energy minister, Chris Bowen, …
Politics June 18, 2022
John Hewson
A matter of integrity commission
In December 2018, 34 former judges wrote a letter to the prime minister expressing their support for the establishment of a national integrity commission with the power to hold public hearings. Apparently, it was not Scott Morrison’s “job” to take …
Economy June 11, 2022
John Hewson
Never let a good gas crisis go to waste
Can you imagine our governments encouraging our food producers to export all their product even if it meant Australians would go hungry? Our local butcher tells us it’s a very real consequence of live animal exports, that reducing the availability of …
Immigration June 11, 2022
Mehdi Ali
Defending the dignity of refugees
It’s like this. I speak to a friend who went through the hard times of Nauru. He is a refugee. For several years he has been in Australia. He can work but he has few other rights. He does not have a permanent visa. He does not know what will happen …
Politics June 4, 2022
Rod Bower
That feeling you have is called ‘moral injury’
On the Monday following the 2019 federal election, I spoke at a conference in Melbourne where hundreds of people gathered, all of whom had a passion for a more just society. The atmosphere was funereal. A pall of hopelessness covered the assembly, many …
paul bongiorno
Politics June 25, 2022
Thirty-four is the number and it has turned federal parliamentary politics on its head. After an agonising month of counting and distributing preferences for both houses of the parliament, the Australian Electoral Commission has tabulated the biggest …
Economy June 18, 2022
The week the energy crisis hit home
This week, the need for the new Albanese government to fix the mess it has inherited became personal for millions of Australians at the mercy of a failed energy market. The threat of blackouts and of freezing in their homes in the middle of one of the …
Politics June 11, 2022
Albanese finds his balance on a bamboo bike
Visual stunts – or picture opportunities, as they are called in the trade – are nothing new in contemporary politics. Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo is just as addicted as any of the practitioners. On Tuesday, he provided the visual metaphor …
editorial
Editorial June 25, 2022
According to protesters, the two men were armed and dressed in full camouflage. They did not identify themselves as police. When confronted near a camp in the Colo Valley outside Sydney, the only words they said were: ‘We’ve been compromised.’
Editorial June 18, 2022
Angus Taylor knew what he was doing. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he is a bright man. He understands accounting tricks. He knew there was a crisis and he preferred to wait for it.
Editorial June 11, 2022
“If we want to consider 32 per cent of the primary vote a mandate, we might need to have to review what a mandate looks like,” says Hollie Hughes. The lack of talent and imagination in the right-wing parties has seen the Coalition ape the nativism of the Republican Party. They play mindless dress-ups, pretending that America’s politics are our politics.
gadfly

Gadfly August 14, 2021
It seems there’s very little that humanity cannot achieve when we put our mind to it. In the past 100 years we’ve landed on the moon, created a global information superhighway, and crossbred poodles with every animal we could get our hands on. Our greatest achievement yet, however, may be the dedication we have shown to destroying our planet.
Gadfly August 7, 2021
It’s remarkably hard to get banned from YouTube. The platform hosts more than 500 hours of fresh videos a minute. That’s more content than even the most dedicated teenager in Sydney fighting lockdown boredom can watch in a lifetime. Almost all of that video – 720,000 hours’ worth a day – is of children unboxing toys or biting each other. The remainder is video of Alan Jones being sceptical about vaccines on Sky News.
Gadfly July 31, 2021
We in Australia love gold more than a Saudi prince’s interior decorator. We’re the gold standard in botched vaccine rollouts and the gold standard in failing to suppress the Delta variant. Fortunately, we’re also the gold standard in women’s swimming at the Olympics, and the gold standard in enthusiastic coaches humping barrier walls.
cartoon
letters
Letters June 25, 2022
There has always been pushback when traditional owners exercise their rights to Country and Culture but, after so many generations of this experience, it should no longer be such a point of conflict (Kath Wilson, “Wombat forest fight”, June 18-24). …
Letters June 18, 2022
Rick Morton’s “‘Negligent in the extreme’: Labor inherits crises across portfolios” (June 11-17) had me contemplating an unlikely possibility – the coming national integrity commission policing election promises. The example of there being …
Letters June 11, 2022
Peter Dutton is the most dangerous of leaders – one who seeks to divide. There is nothing remotely threatening about officially recognising Indigenous languages through naming (Karen Middleton, “Exclusive: Dutton blocked Indigenous names at bases”, …