Paul Keating took the prime ministership with a ‘comprehensive plan to get the country cracking’, but the task was daunting.
National Archives of Australia
Labor’s project of economic transformation hit some harder realities as Paul Keating assumed the top job. And a new push on remaking Australia stirred a brooding reaction of its own.
Malcolm Turnbull is now more circumspect when it comes to the matter of an Australian republic.
AAP/Dan Himbrechts
For Australians to vote in favour of a republic, it may require something more than just crossing out ‘governor-general’ in the Constitution and writing in ‘president’.
Supporters of presidential candidate Al Gore protest during George W. Bush’s inauguration in January 2001. Gore won the popular vote but lost to Bush in the Electoral College.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
While it’s unprecedented to call an election ‘rigged’ before voting has even taken place, there is a history of candidates crying foul after suspicious results.
Through reframing issues, strong leaders can adopt and promote strongly humanitarian policies toward issues such as refugees.
Reuters/Ari Jalal
The normal rules of political engagement – coherence, consistency, fact, logic, proportion – do not apply to members of the paranoid right like Pauline Hanson.
Should Hillary Clinton win the White House the long evolution of Australia-US alliance should continue as normal.
Reuters
US presidents over the past 25 years have had varying views of the alliance with Australia. While none have questioned its value, commitment has not been even across the board.
John Howard’s ABC documentary seeks to establish the centrality of the Menzies years in the creation of modern Australia.
AAP/Alan Porritt
The history of foreign investment in land and real estate shows the global movement of people and capital is closely linked to the prevailing geopolitics.
It would seem to be the case that Mike Baird needs a refresher course in liberalism.
AAP/Joel Carrett
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?
As per tradition Malcolm Turnbull has hosted the annual Prime Minister’s XI cricket match.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Since his ascendancy, the currently trim and muscular-looking Malcolm Turnbull has – for an Australian prime minister – had unusually little to say about sport.
The thrust of contemporary migration policy is not towards settlement but temporariness, not towards belonging but contingency.
AAP
Temporary migrants are excluded from the benefits and rights of Australian citizenship. Is such immigration policy compatible with Australia’s democratic principles and values?
Liberal senator Cory Bernardi claims his ‘Australian Conservatives’ movement has recorded more than 50,000 registrations.
AAP/Sam Mooy
In the last 12 months, under the leadership of an eastern suburbs small-l liberal, the Liberal Party has decided it wants to look more like the party of Hewson than the party of Howard.
The nation’s political chasm – already wide – has grown even more since 2012.
'Partisanship' via www.shutterstock.com
Elected officials and the media are in cahoots. Both have succumbed to a two-party system that treats voters not as independent thinkers, but as blind partisans.
Australia’s current public-policy space is too small to grapple with the huge geopolitical and environmental shifts underway.
EPA/Mast Irham
The idea of hitting voters with a powerful message on election day is just the culmination of three trends in Australian campaign communication that have been brewing for decades.