As the government hints the marriage equality plebiscite may be delayed until 2017, calls intensify for the parliament to legislate on the issue instead. So what is parliament’s role here?
A new book reveals the drama and comedy of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s famous “hand back” of Gurindji land in 1975, following the Wave Hill Walk-Off 50 years ago – and the bittersweet aftermath.
Scare campaigns only work if there is some anxiety to build on. Labor’s Medicare campaign plugged into a long history of Coalition ambivalence – or open hostility – towards Medicare.
The 2016 articulation of an urban agenda assumes building more highways, railways and trams will produce better, more productive cities that somehow give everyone a job.
The way in which Bob Wilesmith’s footage has come to dominate Australians’ recollection of The Dismissal is a story of prescience, luck and the limitations of the TV news technology of the day.
Sir John Kerr probably made his own decision to dismiss the Whitlam government much earlier than he acknowledged publicly while alive – but he came to this conclusion in discussion with others.
In comments reported in a new book to mark the 40th anniversary of the dismissal of Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott offer sharply differing views.
The ALP national conference has lost its policymaking significance of the past. Instead it has become a reflection of the leader’s standing within the party.
While serving in the RAAF, future prime minister Gough Whitlam led his first political campaign, agitating among his own squadron in support of the 1944 referendum.
Malcolm Fraser may be remembered for his failure to intervene in the Franklin Dam campaign, but he otherwise led a government distinguished for its environmental action.
Malcolm Fraser’s relationship with the Australian media waxed and waned, from enthusiasm, pragmatism and caution to something, in the end, approaching mutual respect and perhaps even affection.
Tom Uren was a “Big Man” not only in stature but in his public life. Uren, who has died at the age of 93, was born into a working-class household. Typical of the 1920s and ‘30s, he had a limited formal…
Australia’s public youth radio station, Triple J, turns 40 today. On January 19 1975, Triple J’s AM predecessor, Double J, infamously burst onto Sydney’s airwaves with the track, You Just Like Me Cause…
Last week, I was one of a sea of Australians who rose to remember Gough Whitlam. Fitting its subject, the Whitlam memorial was sweeping. It was as much a grand story of Australia’s evolution since the…
In a playful rhetorical flourish at the Sydney Town Hall on Wednesday, Indigenous leader Noel Pearson monumentalised Gough Whitlam’s prime ministerial legacy, Monty Python-style: What did the Romans ever…
Gough Whitlam was a prime minister unsuccessful in three of his five federal election campaigns, including 1975’s extremely divisive contest. Somehow, though, his death has sparked an outpouring of kind…
Edward Gough Whitlam has passed on, leaving behind millions of citizens saddened by scores of eloquent obituaries reminding us how, once upon a time, Australian politics produced world-class leaders courageously…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne