As the fallout from Julia Gillard’s speech on Tuesday afternoon dies down, I find myself watching the footage again and again. While her words were compelling, the sting in the Prime Minister’s performance…
The Gillard government could have been forgiven for believing an electoral renaissance was underway. But just as it appeared the prime minister was going to cruise to the end of the year, the government…
Peter Slipper has resigned. The sexist text messages mentioning female genitalia published as part of a civil court case were suddenly the bridge too far for Her Majesty’s Opposition. But the Opposition…
In a discussion with ABC journalist Emma Alberici on Lateline last week, Liberal MP Kelly O’Dwyer defended Tony Abbott from attacks by Labor ministers who criticised his attitudes towards women. In the…
The interesting part about this weekend’s kerfuffle over Alan Jones’ comments about the late John Gillard is not what Jones said. After all, we’ve known about his combative - some would say offensive…
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…
Accepting the Democratic nomination earlier this month, President Barack Obama said he was inspired by the spirit of “the auto worker who won the lottery after his plant almost closed, but kept coming…
The battle over the future of Australia’s school funding arrangements has started in earnest. Outlining the government’s response to the landmark Gonski Review, Prime Minister Gillard spoke of a national…
Yesterday the Prime Minister announced the government will introduce some of the recommendations of the Gonski Review, including a new model for funding schools. Many commentators criticised the announcement…
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 took aim yesterday at the “misogynists” and “nut jobs” on the internet posting about her conduct 17 years ago while working as an industrial lawyer. The Prime Minister said…
The Labor government appears to have a spring in its step. After months of poor polls and difficulty passing legislation, things now seem to be going Labor’s way. In recent weeks, the government has been…
Greeting the findings of the Houston expert panel on asylum seekers, The Australian front page exclaimed “At last, people put before politics”. This is, of course, ridiculous. The Malaysian solution would…
Poor Greg Sheridan: he never met a prime minister he couldn’t be besotted with until Julia Gillard came along. Ever since she got the top job, he has been running a campaign designed to demonstrate that…
Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered one of her strongest messages to the mining sector last night, telling mining bosses at a Minerals Industry dinner in Canberra that they don’t own Australia’s minerals…
“Class warfare” is an emotive term that would seem to belong to a bygone age when there also existed, as in the minds of many people, something called the “class struggle”. It would seem strange that in…
The idea that Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan have launched a “class war” in Australia through last week’s federal budget is a huge joke. I don’t believe The Australian’s editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell even…
To quote American baseball manager Yogi Berra, it was “déjà vu all over again” last night when I listened to Tony Abbott’s budget reply. I was back in the 1970s but without the big-collared shirts and…
This morning my phone woke me earlier than usual with a text from one of my sons, who regularly taps into American politics in the middle of the night. “Obama has come out for gay marriage – how about…
Fair Work Australia (FWA) has recommended civil court action be taken against MP and former Health Services Union (HSU) national secretary Craig Thomson. The regulator says the union committed 105 breaches…