After nearly six months on the policy bench, the Gillard Labor government is planning to release its response to the Gonski review into school funding. The government is still debating the reforms in cabinet…
Thanks to the hubris of Bronwyn Pike, the Victorian Labor party is forced to contest a byelection this weekend it did not want or need. After years of opportunities provided by the Labor party to the former…
The looming byelection in the state seat of Melbourne is set to have a national impact. With Greens candidate Cathy Oke strongly tipped to beat Labor’s Jennifer Kanis on 21 July - the first time the ALP…
The two main political parties agree to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to 5% below the 2000 level, or about a 20% reduction below business as usual. However, they propose very different policy…
The ALP and the union movement have never liked scabs. But yesterday we witnessed a labour scab of a different sort as The Wound Formally Known As Craig Thomson continued to be bleed rather than heal…
What are political parties for? Do they exist only to win elections or are they for the benefit of members with process as important as outcome? These are the fundamental questions that former British…
More than ten years ago, the Australian public and policymakers overreacted to 9/11 and created a set of laws that went beyond what was needed to protect us against terrorism. With the recent release of…
The Health Services Union’s scandal continues with calls for its national president to resign and moves to remove Kathy Jackson, the whistleblower who first revealed claims of credit card misuse, from…
Labor’s devastating Queensland election result has prompted much soul searching within the party and questions about its fundamental approach. Do voters even know what the Labor party stands for? Or is…
The Queensland election can tell us a lot about Labor’s electoral future. There is no doubt that if the Queensland state election landslide against Labor were extrapolated to federal boundaries, the federal…
The likely defeat of the Bligh Labor government in this weekend’s Queensland elections may not have the negative implications for the Gillard government that many commentators might expect. The presence…
In recent days, Treasurer Wayne Swan has been prosecuting a puzzling assault on a few billionaire mining magnates. Commentators have struggled to come up with a plausible explanation for his political…
The former NSW premier Bob Carr will join the Senate as Foreign Affairs Minister following a surprise announcement by the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, as part of her cabinet reshuffle. The appointment…
One of Julia Gillard’s better days in Australian politics was nonetheless brought to an unusual end yesterday with the resignation of Mark Arbib. The former right faction leader, who most recently served…
Prime minister Julia Gillard has defeated Kevin Rudd in this morning’s leadership ballot by 71 votes to 31. Rudd has said he will not initiate a further challenge to the prime minister’s leadership, but…
Less than 12 hours after making his dramatic resignation in Washington, Rudd was back at the lectern. This time, however, his speech sounded more like a campaign pitch. Watch part of Kevin Rudd’s conference…
After much speculation, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has today announced the date of the up-coming state elections. The poll, now to be held on March 24, comes after a difficult year for the Bligh government…
It might seem that the days before Christmas would be an odd time to announce a cabinet reshuffle, but for the Prime Minister it was the latest in a series of manoeuvres designed to help the government…
On Sunday, the Australian Labor Party voted 206 to 185 in favour of changing one part of the party’s longstanding and non-negotiable platform on uranium exports: that recipient states must be members of…
Potential reform of the Labor Party’s internal structure has been substantially limited, as the Right faction asserted its overall dominance of the weekend’s national conference. Prime Minister Julia Gillard…