Opinion
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Politics May 21, 2022
John Hewson
A choice between two lessers
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
Kevin Rudd
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 nearly …
Politics May 14, 2022
Fred Chaney
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 responsibility …
Economy May 7, 2022
John Hewson
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
Richard Denniss
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 …
Economy April 30, 2022
John Hewson
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 …
paul bongiorno
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 Morrison …
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 …
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 certainly …
editorial
Editorial May 21, 2022
The government Scott Morrison leads has achieved less in three terms than perhaps any other in Australian history. What it has accomplished has largely made the country worse.
Editorial May 7, 2022
Last refugees of the scoundrel
By now it is obvious that people in detention are props to Scott Morrison. They are not human to him. They represent only voters’ fears.
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.
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letters
Letters May 21, 2022
When I migrated here in the late 1970s from a failed democracy, Australia was about to enter a time of great optimism. During the past nine years, however, the rise of self-interest, mean-spiritedness, inequality and corruption has seen the retreat of …
Letters May 14, 2022
Trapped in the politics of fear
Two weeks out from the last election it was difficult to put money on the Coalition to win. However, combative fear-based arguments targeted at the working class saying life was all about the economy and you couldn’t trust Labor to manage it turned …
Letters May 7, 2022
So Anthony Albanese says “we’re going to get on with winning an election based on Labor principles about jobs, industrial relations and climate change” (Mike Seccombe, “The inside story of Labor’s election promises”, April 30–May 6). The …