The battle for the seat of Melbourne at this year’s federal election will be nothing short of a bruising affair. Melbourne is of enormous symbolic importance to both Labor and the Green Party. For Labor…
Former Premier Geoff Gallop helped reform the Western Australian Labor Party. But can it be done federally?
AAP/Alan Porritt
There are always two challenges that face a political party operating in a democratic system such as ours – public trust and public policy. When I was elected leader of the Western Australian Parliamentary…
Melissa Parke visiting a local school with Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
AAP/Rebecca Le May
Geoffrey Robinson: We’re here for The Conversation. Melissa, you’ve got an interesting career background working in the legal sector of the international human rights law. That’s perhaps very different…
Labor elder Senator John Faulkner has called for a thorough reform of internal party practices.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
Since its nineteenth century birth, the Australian Labor Party has helped to define the country’s institutional landscape. But according to one of its most respected members, party grandee Senator John…
When former leaders take the public stage, nostalgia hits for voters.
ABCTV
Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull’s appearances on Q&A last night were always going to make a splash. High-profile media appearances by Rudd and Turnbull inevitably prompt speculation among the media…
Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd in parliament shortly after the 2010 federal election.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Dennis Altman I’m going to start by quoting you when you say, talking about your career as a journalist, particularly a radio and television journalist, that “there was plenty of robust exchanges but my…
Lindsay Tanner has railed against his own party in a new book.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Lindsay Tanner was one of a generation of Labor activists who came to political maturity in the 1980s. These were challenging years for the Australian left. Labor’s 1983 victory set Australia apart from…
Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan, pictured at the ALP state conference in Queensland on Sunday, finally have something to smile about.
This week’s Newspoll and Age/Nielsen poll make interesting reading in the wake of last week’s debate over the relationship between the Labor and the Greens. According to Newspoll, support for Labor has…
Both political parties are lining up their elections strategies now, even though an election could still be a year away.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
The former British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson famously said a week is a long time in politics. If this is the case, then you have to wonder how long it will feel if the current Parliament runs it full…
Prime Minister Julia Gillard speaking at the release of the Gonski report in Canberra earlier this year.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
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…
ALP candidate Jennifer Kanis (pictured) has won a narrow victory over favoured Greens candidate Cathy Oke.
AAP/David Crosling
The outcome of the Melbourne by-election, in which Labor has claimed a narrow victory, reflected a disappointing performance from the Greens. At the 2010 state election Labor’s victory was dependent on…
Greens candidate Cathy Oke and deputy leader Adam Bandt will be hoping for a win this Saturday.
AAP Image/Juolian Smith
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…
Paul Howes (pictured) believes the Greens represent a threat to Labor’s electability.
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Governments and their partisans are usually reluctant to admit that they might be unpopular for a reason. Labor partisans have offered many explanations for the unpopularity of the Gillard government…
Is next week’s Melbourne state byelection a test for federal Labor?
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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…
We’ve had a glimpse into the world of Craig Thomson, but he’s trying to justify a view that no one outside the political game can understand.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
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…
The Craig Thomson drama shows it’s time for unions and politicians to separate.
AAP/Miles Godfrey
The sordid details of Craig Thomson and the Health Services Union affair at one level reflect individual failings on the part of Thomson, HSU East Secretary Michael Williams and National Secretary Kathy…
Australian Labor needs to refocus not on the “working class”, but on its core beliefs.
Dean Lewins
Like Geoff Gallop I would like to believe the woes of the Gillard government are not also the death throes of the Labor Party, even after the debacle this weekend that saw Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper…
Does Labor have a future after Julia Gillard?
AAP/Alan Porrit
Every day seems to be the worst day for the Gillard government. With an opposition that has refined negativity into a stilleto, it seems that nearly everything the government attempts backfires, leaving…
Former prime ministers Gordon Brown and Kevin Rudd before the 2009 G20 summit.
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…
The union scandal surrounding Labor MP Craig Thompson shows just why the Labor party should re-consider its relationship with the unions.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
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…