Less than a week after being named royal commissioner to investigate the Northern Territory child detention and protection systems, Brian Martin has quit, citing criticisms of his appointment.
When Attorney-General George Brandis was asked on Q&A about a parliamentary vote on the decision to go to war, he said that was not part of the Westminster tradition. Is that right?
The decline in Malcolm Turnbull’s popularity and the increasingly explicit critiques of his leadership have raised the question of whether the Liberal Party has a unifying ideology.
Decisions made by the federal government’s Catalyst arts fund are shrouded in secrecy and mystery. How are they reached and where is the transparency in deciding who receives money?
The Australian Law Reform Commission has given George Brandis a report that does all that it reasonably could, while falling well short of what it was asked to do.
Treasurer Scott Morrison has flagged the prospect of ministers campaigning on both sides in the same-sex marriage plebiscite – as happened in the republic referendum.
In the latest example of the government’s cack-handedness, Attorney-General George Brandis on Sunday promised a plebiscite on same-sex marriage this year, only to have the Prime Minister’s Office hang…
The government’s fast timetable for a same-sex marriage plebiscite seems to strengthen the prospect of an election being held sooner rather than later.
Fixing copyright is essential for Malcolm Turnbull’s ‘ideas boom’ to succeed, but you wouldn’t know it given the slow and repetitive approach to copyright reform.
With a change in prime minister and a new arts minister there has been an acknowledgement perhaps that the arts matter. But have the needs and concerns of the arts sector have been understood?
Attorney-General George Brandis told the ABC that Australia co-operates with the United Nations in relation to its human rights obligations. Is that right?
What if Malcolm Turbull’s conception of “21st-century government” imagines a healthy civil society and a responsive economy that values debate, imagination, difference and surprise - all provided by the arts.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne