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Articles sur Political history

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John Howard sealed his fate by going too far with WorkChoices, but he got the balance right and succeeded with the GST reform. AAP/Andrew Brownbill

Why not listen to the people for a solution to the reform stalemate?

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…
If Tony Abbott loses his job as Liberal leader, the two major parties will have changed their leaders seven times since the 2007 election. AAP/Nikki Short

Leadership crises turn short-term thinking into long-term failure

As the public awaits the result of a motion to spill the Liberal Party leadership, MPs, political observers and the public alike should seriously consider what the never-ending spill culture means for…
You never know what you’ll find when you rifle through a box of war diaries. PA

Digital records take something precious from military history

Digital networks and databases appear to crush historical distance. Archives of war increasingly come to us. A simple YouTube search throws up a chaotic mix of official and unauthorised, user-generated…
Tom Uren gave a lifetime of service to his country: first in war, then as a campaigner for peace, a government minister and, in his later years, a mentor to many. Australian Information Service 1983/National Archives of Australia

Tom Uren, a ‘Big Man’ in his political vision and in person

Tom Uren was a “Big Man” not only in stature but in his public life. Uren, who has died at the age of 93, was born into a working-class household. Typical of the 1920s and ‘30s, he had a limited formal…
Any discussion of ‘mateship’ in 2015 will inevitably exist in the shadow of the centenary of the landings at Gallipoli. Australian War Memorial

Book review: Mateship – A Very Australian History

In late 2007, a couple of months after our last HSC exam, one of my best friends punched me. In hindsight, I probably deserved it. We were 18, liberated from school and newcomers to alcohol. To make a…
The protagonists are different in this political reincarnation of Pauline Hanson and One Nation, and so is the lay of the land in Australian politics. AAP/Dave Hunt

Hanson gets the band back together – can she make an impact?

Pauline Hanson has reunited with One Nation to contest the seat of Lockyer in the upcoming Queensland election. The reunion is an acknowledgement that neither Hanson nor her former party has fared so well…
In an otherwise fraught policy landscape, ‘cheapness’ has been one of the cold hard facts of Indigenous affairs. AAP/Tracey Nearmy

Cheap in the deep sense: the sorry business of Indigenous affairs

Prime Minister Tony Abbott made a bold move in September when he ran the country for four days from a tent at Gulkula in far northeast Arnhem Land in remote Australia. While there, he observed that although…
Christopher Pyne argues that the government is on the side of history in reforming higher education, but it is a bad history that he evokes. AAP/Lukas Coch

The big reforms that prevail fuse the best of left and right

After the defeat of the Abbott government’s higher education bills in the Senate, Education Minister Christopher Pyne invoked the legacy of past “reforms” that had been violently contested at the time…
Politicians would deny that wealthy people buying time with them and donating to parties influences decision making. EPA/Steffen Schmidt

Integrity in politics

Below is the text of Michelle Grattan’s Accountability Round Table lecture, November 18, 2014. Most of us who’ve been around politics for a while in one capacity or another can remember the time when misleading…
Politics was very much on display during last week’s memorial service for former prime minister Gough Whitlam. AAP/Brendon Thorne

Booing at a memorial: politeness and political ritual

Last week, I was one of a sea of Australians who rose to remember Gough Whitlam. Fitting its subject, the Whitlam memorial was sweeping. It was as much a grand story of Australia’s evolution since the…
A campaign pro before his time: Benjamin Disraeli. Wikimedia Commons

Why do we care about politicians’ personal lives? Blame Disraeli

We have become used to politicians talking about their emotions and their domestic lives. Indeed, it sometimes seems you can’t get anywhere in politics until you’ve been photographed with your arm wrapped…
Gough Whitlam took principled revisionism to the very top of Labor politics. AAP/Sergio Dionisio

Whitlam’s hard fight for reform holds lessons for Labor today

There was nothing inevitable about Gough Whitlam’s rise to the top. He had to fight every inch of the way. The fight was not only against born-to-rule Liberals who thought he had betrayed his class but…
In office, the late Gough Whitlam sought to fulfil, rather than to end, the promise of capitalism. AAP/Alan Porritt

Political limits of today intensify rosy memory of Whitlamism

The popular response to Gough Whitlam’s death tells us more about the politics of the present than the past. Whitlam has been cast as a messiah; as Labor’s saviour; and as the slayer of what Paul Keating…
With his strong views on industrial relations, Family First senator Bob Day is what we might call a ‘conservative libertarian’. AAP/Lukas Coch

Changing the soul: are conservatives the new radicals?

Few members of the 20th-century political right were more important than Milton Friedman. As an academic, author, television presenter and adviser to Ronald Reagan – who once described his show Free to…
Robert Menzies may be a Liberal hero for John Howard and his successors in the current government, but his budgets fit their definition of ‘disaster’. AAP/Alan Porritt

Menzies, a failure by today’s rules, ran a budget to build the nation

Robert Menzies left Australia in far worse financial shape than he found it, at least according to current treasurer Joe Hockey’s favourite debt and deficit benchmark. Having inherited budget surpluses…
In his response to MH17, prime minister Tony Abbott acted according to some personal and cultural expectations of leadership. AAP/Alan Porritt

Abbott’s leadership role models serve him well in MH17 crisis

It was the bloodshot eyes that conveyed to one journalist the strain and weariness weighing upon prime minister Tony Abbott as he dealt with the MH17 tragedy. Australians learned of the office naps between…
The government has manoeuvred itself into a position where its bluster has made it vulnerable to Clive Palmer’s bluster in the Senate. AAP/Lukas Coch

Early missteps show Abbott needs a plan B to deal with the Senate

Last week, television news presented grabs of former prime minister John Howard arriving in Canberra. It is unknown if Howard was there to share his wisdom with Coalition MPs on how to deal with minor…

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