Should Tony Abbott follow Barack Obama’s example and apologise personally to Indonesia leaders over the spying scandal, as Obama did to Angela Merkel?
EPA/Andrew Harrer
The contrast between Australian prime minister Tony Abbott’s self-defeating response to spying allegations with Indonesia and US president Barack Obama’s reaction to smooth its similar row with Germany…
It is sensible to keep an eye on our friends in order to manage risk.
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The specifics of whose phone was tapped and when may be new to Indonesia but the fact that Australia monitored its close friend’s activities will not be a surprise. Governments have been watching each…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott (front left) and Queensland Premier Campbell Newman (front right) are keen to overhaul COAG, but will they succeed where others have failed?
AAP Image/Dan Peled
Tony Abbott will face a fired-up “states’ union” at his first meeting with Australia’s premiers and chief ministers next month, with Queensland Premier Campbell Newman calling on the federal government…
For the Australian Signals Directorate – as with all organisations in the spying business – the secret of success is in keeping your success secret.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Much like in the movie Casablanca, there is much huffing and shaking of heads about activities of the nation’s electronic spy agency, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), after allegations emerged…
The Guardian and ABC’s case to publish information about Australia’s phone tapping is a defensible one.
EPA/Adi Weda
Were The Guardian Australia and the ABC ethically justified in publishing leaked classified material showing Australia tapped the telephones of Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife…
Reports from Jakarta suggest Indonesia may be moving to review all aspects of its relationship to Australia.
EPA/Adi Weda
The revelations that Australia was spying on its “best friends” in Indonesia have rocked Indonesia-Australia relations. Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa has withdrawn the country’s ambassador…
Swapping asylum seekers for refugees is unlikely to be the panacea that the federal government hopes it will be.
AAP
For those of us with a long enough memory of asylum politics, discussion this week of a “people swap” deal between Indonesia and Australia harks back to earlier plans by the then-Labor government to exchange…
Australia has refused to join Canada and India in boycotting CHOGM in Sri Lanka over human rights abuses.
EPA
Australian prime minister Tony Abbott announced earlier this week that he would not join his Canadian, Indian and Mauritian counterparts in boycotting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM…
What are Australia’s legal and moral responsibilities under the relevant conventions and the law of the sea to rescue and ‘turn back’ asylum seeker boats?
AAP
Prime minister Tony Abbott said on Monday he expects Jakarta to take responsibility for the asylum seekers that Australian authorities rescue in Indonesia’s search and rescue zone. He claims this is the…
Newly sworn in Clive Palmer declares “I’m a politician now. I’m not in business.”
AAP Image/Daniel Munoz
Almost all the politicians sworn in today for the new Parliament are much constrained, glued to the parties that put them there. That imposes disciplines at multiple levels. Clive Palmer, as he showed…
Tony Abbott was a formidable opposition leader but how effective will the Abbott-led Coalition be in government?
AAP Image/Joe Castro
Just over two months ago Tony Abbott led the Coalition to victory and became Australia’s 28th prime minister. When the new parliament begins today, his side will sit on the government benches for the first…
There is no better example of the debasement of Australian political discourse and process than that which has surrounded action on climate change.
AAP/Alan Porritt
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…
Nationals, Labor and Indonesians are complicating Abbott’s early days.
AAP Image/Jane Dempster
Tony Abbott must be thinking: thank goodness for the “honeymoon”. It is helping lessen the public impact of some quite serious early problems his government is having. Abbott is assisted not just by the…
What does the future hold for multiculturalism in Australia under an Abbott government?
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Rupert Murdoch’s Lowy lecture last week celebrated Australia as a multicultural and migrant society, a place where “multiculturalism is not relativism, and tolerance is not indifference” and there is “an…
Environment minister Greg Hunt and prime minister Tiny Abbott are keen to repeal the carbon tax as soon as parliament sits - but it may prove harder than they thought.
AAP/Alan Porritt
The Coalition will introduce its draft bill to repeal the Clean Energy Act into parliament next week. The bill would effectively remove the current carbon tax and its planned replacement, an emissions…
Tony Abbott’s interview with the Washington Post has revived Abbott’s problem of loose lips - but this time, it’s on the international stage.
AAP/Matthew Newton
The words won’t rank with the oratorical flourishes of great leaders but I can’t remember Churchill or Roosevelt describing anybody as “wacko”. When prime minister Tony Abbott uttered this word in an interview…
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…
What are the constitutional and political issues for Tony Abbott to consider around double dissolution elections?
AAP/Alan Porritt
Prime minister Tony Abbott has indicated (again) that he is willing to set in motion the procedures necessary to call a double dissolution election, in order to force the repeal of the carbon tax through…
Tony Abbott described Shinzo Abe’s Japan as Australia’s ‘closest friend in Asia’. But how might Abbott’s bold declaration affect our relationship in the region?
AAP/Karlis Salna
At the joint Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-East Asia summit just held in Brunei, prime minister Tony Abbott hailed Japan as Australia’s “closest friend in Asia”. Abbott invited Japanese…
Parliament provides allowances to assist members and senators carry out their duties but should it include going to the football?
AAP Image/David Crosling
Federal politicians can rack up relatively large bills in going about their day-to-day duties. In the last six months of 2012, Julia Gillard had allowances totalling A$647,000 – that’s nearly three times…