From Hawke-Keating to Rudd-Gillard, climate policy has an uncanny ability to cost Australian political leaders their jobs. And it was a key element in the rivalry between Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull.
Labor has long had leaders, such as former prime minister Paul Keating, capable of speaking the language of Anzac.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Malcolm Fraser may be remembered for his failure to intervene in the Franklin Dam campaign, but he otherwise led a government distinguished for its environmental action.
Lunch with Gough and Malcolm, as guests of Barry Jones in 2008.
Brian Dawe
Malcolm Fraser used to argue that he had not changed his political position, but he had in significant ways. This personal evolution was a wonderful quality in the former prime minister.
Journalist George Megalogenis takes an affectionate journey through the milieu of Australia’s economic reform in a new ABC documentary, Making Australia Great.
ABC TV
The distinction between the global and the local is collapsing under the pressure of climate change, economic restructuring, global migration and jihadism on the one hand and the populist and information…
Mercurial, visionary: Paul Keating was by far the most industrious treasurer Australia has ever had.
National Archives of Australia: A6180, 15/2/93/25
A recent public poll showed that of Australia’s recent federal treasurers, Peter Costello and even John Howard were rated higher than Paul Keating. Joe Hockey was rated the worst. Today’s release of the…
Bob Hawke on a 1984 visit to China. His government implemented policies which boosted Asian engagement.
National Archives
The Hawke government in the 1980s is widely considered to be the most competent and effective of recent years. Some may say this is not setting the bar terribly high, but the cabinet papers of 1988-89…
The Sunday Age on the morning after Gough Whitlam’s 1972 election victory.
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 full story of the Keating years – and their aftermath – is both far more complex and contentious than the man himself would have us believe in his ABC
interviews.
AAP/David Crosling
The ABC’s four-part series of interviews with Paul Keating, which has just finished airing, displayed the former prime minister and treasurer in all his complexity, both at his best and at his worst. This…
Kevin Rudd leaves parliament with his future as uncertain as his legacy.
AAP/Daniel Munoz
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…
Bill Shorten is reportedly reconsidering the Labor Party’s position on the question of a carbon tax, the latest chapter in Labor’s long history with climate change policy.
AAP/Alan Porritt
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…
Are leadership battles in Australian politics a sign of party difference or unity? Or is it something altogether different?
AAP/Lukas Coch
In a scene in the famous 90s sitcom Seinfeld, George describes to Jerry an idea for a show about nothing. After the events of the last days and weeks in federal and state politics, we can ask whether Australian…
The Business Council of Australia’s Jennifer Westacott has called for a debate over the role of Australia’s public service.
The provocative address by Business Council of Australia chief Jennifer Westacott to the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA) International Congress in Melbourne yesterday achieved something…