Thank you, Queensland. You’ve been good to me. I hope I’ve left you a better place. So said Wayne Goss as he resigned the role of premier on February 19, 1996. He had served since the election in December…
Julia Gillard’s autobiography, My Story, presents a comprehensive defence of her prime ministership. Gillard dives straight into the heart of her story, beginning on the day she was sworn in as prime minister…
After his speech about party renewal last week, I went to Labor Senator John Faulkner’s Facebook page. It has about 2700 likes. The page features links to speeches and pictures of events that Faulkner…
Why would anyone want to be prime minister? Why indeed? It is a job that will almost certainly end in failure. Only one prime minister in the last 100 years has left office at the time of his own choosing…
The following was delivered as the 2014 Dean Jaensch Lecture at Flinders University, September 16. In opposition, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott were fond of comparing their battles to become the nation’s…
The most important finding in the final report of the Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program is the one the Abbott government is least likely to heed. One of the two crucial flaws Commissioner…
Australian election campaigns are facing another revolutionary change, which has the potential to transform the electoral contest, redefine campaign funding and even revive political parties. The “micro-targeting…
It’s understandable that coverage of Kevin Rudd’s appearance before the royal commission into the home insulation program should focus on the image of a former Prime Minister humbled over a policy that…
Climate change is a problem for democracy. The scientific modelling is compelling and the evidence alarming. The problems begin when the science crosses into the democratic sphere of politics and public…
Three prime ministers, four Labor Party leaders, two popes. 2013 was nothing if not a hectic year for the Politics + Society desk at The Conversation. And while it’s repeated so often as to go beyond being…
Throughout Keating, a series of interviews that finished airing on the ABC earlier this month, the former prime minister makes reference to the notion of political capital in relation to the Labor government…
Ongoing reflections on the fall of the Rudd/Gillard Labor governments continue to feature suggestions about the impact of policy shifts to the Left, especially under Gillard (possibly influenced by her…
The Liberals will have their star candidate Bill Glasson running for them in the by-election for Kevin Rudd’s former seat of Griffith. The 60-year-old eye surgeon substantially trimmed Rudd’s margin at…
Should we care about Kevin Rudd’s legacy? Will anyone care? Australian political historians gaze with envy at the United States, where past presidents are revered and books about the “founding fathers…
The spectacular story ran for a nanosecond. Kevin Rudd had allegedly done a deal for daughter Jessica to get preselection for the seat he is vacating. It would have been the ultimate Ruddism. Jess immediately…
Kevin Rudd’s final speech in parliament last night was delivered in his customary egocentric fashion. There will be many think pieces on Rudd’s career and his legacy, but perhaps the more interesting immediate…
Kevin Rudd has bowed out of politics in a tearful farewell to Parliament that drew a heartfelt tribute from Tony Abbott and a highly emotional one from former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull. Ending…
We live in an age of unprecedented prosperity, in which the major influences have been secularism, materialism, utilitarianism, urbanisation, remoteness from nature, institutional failure (especially in…
As the new leader of the Labor opposition, Bill Shorten has a number of issues to deal with that have been left over from the previous three years of Labor government. Working out Labor’s climate change…
The recent demands of business leaders for prime minister Tony Abbott to immediately reform the industrial relations system, rather than wait three years, should serve as yet another reminder of why corporate…