The Abbott government’s use of royal commissions for political retribution has revived an older tradition around the politics of scandal.
AAP/Dan Peled
It would be a fair observation that the Abbott government hopes that the result of the two royal commissions it has established since taking office will be damaging to the Labor Party. The royal commissions…
The Australian Labor Party is constantly faced with an expectation to be true to traditional ‘Labor values’ but to then adapt them to a changing Australia.
AAP/Daniel Munoz
In the wake of the ALP’s poor result in the recent Western Australia Senate election, The Conversation is publishing a series of articles looking at the party’s brand, organisation and future prospects…
Speaker Bronwyn Bishop faces an uphill battle to gain the respect of political observers and opposition MPs.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Seven Speakers of the British House of Commons were executed by beheading between 1394 and 1535. While Bronwyn Bishop, the current Speaker of Australia’s House of Representatives, is unlikely to face this…
Issues around ‘who gets what’ in Australia may soon become much more central to political debate than under previous governments.
AAP/Alan Porritt
The Conversation is running a series, Class in Australia, to identify, illuminate and debate its many manifestations. Here, Geoffrey Robinson traces the history of Australian political debate on class…
The days when Qantas flew the flag as an iconic government business and public service still inspire public nostalgia.
AAP/Paul Miller
Sometimes in politics Newton’s Third Law – for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction – is applicable. Australia has a long history of public ownership, but it also has a long history of…
Incognito: Wicks’s leaks saved two generations billions in child benefit.
Anthony Devlin/PA
The children of this country owe a debt of gratitude to Malcolm Wicks, who died last year. If you have ever benefited from child benefit, you have him to thank. While Wicks was dying he wrote a memoir…
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…
“Ask what you can do for your country”: John F. Kennedy in 1963.
PA
Even though the assassination of John F Kennedy was the US’s fourth such loss, contemporaries talked of the end of national innocence. Looking back, 50 years on, perhaps what was so shocking was the killing…
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…
The business community may try to get as much out of Tony Abbott as possible, but do they recognise the clear differences between a CEO and a prime minister?
AAP/Bianca De Marchi
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…
The new opposition leader, Bill Shorten, has very little leverage over the government.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
Australian parliamentary politics has always had a reputation for a certain rough and tumble. In the 1850s, British economist William Stanley Jevons commented on the rowdiness of the proceedings of the…
Julia Gillard has returned to the public spotlight just months after she was deposed as prime minister, and will likely remain front-and-centre in public life.
AAP/Dan Himbrechts
Former prime minister Julia Gillard has returned to the spotlight after maintaining a dignified silence since her removal as Labor leader in June. Since the defeat of the federal Labor government, she…
The twin defeats of the Whitlam government in the 1970s was the last time the ALP truly looked forward in regrouping and reforming to win back government.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
How can Labor regroup after the trauma of its defeat at the federal election? The best example the past offers is how the party rebuilt after the tumultuous prime ministership of Gough Whitlam in the mid-1970s…