The annual February festival of lampooning the largest visible donor lulls Australians into a false sense of security that there is a functioning political donations disclosure regime in place.
If the predicted strong preferences from One Nation to the LNP occur at the Queensland election, it would be bad news not just for state Labor, but also federal Labor.
Malcolm Turnbull needs to continue to stare down the conservative forces in his government, because what they are demanding is prejudiced and discriminatory.
The Turnbull government is still tying itself in knots over the future of coal, as literally decades of policy turmoil on climate and energy continue to roll on.
The lack of moderates in the Liberals’ succession list is notable, given Christopher Pyne’s ill-judged boast to the faction that it was in the ‘winners’ circle’.
Like Malcolm Turnbull, the three-time prime minister Alfred Deakin was sometimes accused of lacking substance, but he had core political commitments from which he never wavered.
Having lit the match that fired same-sex marriage back onto the government’s immediate agenda, the five Liberal rebels have left Malcolm Turnbull with a dangerously smouldering issue that will burn on…
Even acknowledging that Australia is lagging internationally and that same-sex marriage should have been delivered yesterday, the implosion around the issue is extraordinary.
Malcolm Turnbull’s claim that Robert Menzies’ party was meant to be one of the ‘sensible centre’ has some validity – but it may also be that that centre has shifted significantly, too.