Bill Shorten, who seemed so impressive as a union leader and minister, is shaping up as the least inspiring opposition leader since Alexander Downer. In foreign affairs, Shorten’s fear of repeating Mark…
University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Stephen Parker and Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan discuss the week in politics including Bill Shorten’s identification of himself in a rape allegation, what…
Opposition leader Bill Shorten faced the media with his wife Chloe Bryce on Thursday.
AAP/Julian Smith
Bill Shorten had little practical alternative but to name himself as the person police had been investigating in relation to an alleged rape in the 1980s. The opposition leader told reporters that the…
Opposition leader Bill Shorten described the rape allegation as abhorrent.
AAP/Paul Miller
Opposition leader Bill Shorten has identified himself as the senior Labor figure investigated by Victoria Police after an allegation he had raped a young woman in the 1980s. In a claim made last October…
It seems things are not yet bad enough in the Labor Party to make significant reform, such as John Faulkner’s proposed changes to preselection, likely.
AAP/Daniel Munoz
Labor senator John Faulkner does not anticipate that his moves to reform the party’s preselection processes will succeed at this weekend’s NSW State Conference. Faulkner is hoping to have the rules changed…
Bill Shorten has reaffirmed Labor’s commitment to action on climate change.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Opposition leader Bill Shorten has taken his battle with prime minister Tony Abbott over climate policy to an international stage, saying the issue should be a priority for the G20 leaders’ meeting in…
Has our political system become so adversarial that it is cannibalising our democracy? It’s a tempting conclusion when we think of the recent and current bitter tone in federal politics and look at how…
Joe Hockey’s budget speech forgot the age-old rules of rhetoric, which he needed to observe if he wanted to control ‘the narrative’.
Lukas Coch/AAP
The annual federal budget speech is the one required speech of the Australian political calendar. And it goes all the way back to Federation. It’s Australia’s equivalent of the State of the Union address…
Opposition leader Bill Shorten attacked the government’s budget as ‘ideological’, but his own vision in the battle of ideas is far less clear.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Opposition leader Bill Shorten was emphatic in his budget in reply that the Abbott government’s first budget was an “attack” on the Australian way of life. In his speech on the floor of parliament last…
Opposition leader Bill Shorten delivered his first budget in reply speech on the floor of parliament tonight.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Opposition leader Bill Shorten has vowed to oppose funding cuts to hospitals, schools and higher education in his budget in reply speech, threatening more than A$10 billion in budget savings proposed by…
In the lead-up to the budget, Labor and its leader Bill Shorten seem strangely absent from debates about the purpose of government.
AAP/Paul Miller
Bill Shorten has clearly taken Tony Abbott as his role model as opposition leader. Shorten’s refrain of “broken promises” and “no more taxes” has an eerie ring of familiarity to it, and risks turning the…
Bill Shorten’s objective of an ‘inclusive’ Labor Party is hard to argue against in theory, but achieving it in practice is likely to prove fraught.
AAP/Julian Smith
Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten has outlined his vision for a rejuvenated Labor Party. His speech earlier this week was a call to arms for the reform of federal Labor’s organisational rules. While Shorten’s…
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…
British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband has embarked on sweeping internal reform of his party. Should his Australian counterpart Bill Shorten follow suit?
EPA/Andy Rain
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…
Former Education Minister Bill Shorten addresses the teachers rally in WA: but did he cut their funding?
AAP
“I think it’s more than a tad hypocritical of the Labor Party to be campaigning against what it says are cuts to school funding when Bill Shorten as education minister cut $1.2 billion out of school funding…
Prime minister Tony Abbott said too many unnecessary regulations were costing businesses and hurting productivity.
AAP/Daniel Munoz
Prime minister Tony Abbott said his government would create “the biggest bonfire of regulations in our country’s history” as it moved to cut A$700 million from business compliance costs. Abbott was outlining…
Rudd’s zip gives Shorten an early electoral test.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
The spectacular story ran for a nanosecond. Kevin Rudd had allegedly done a deal for daughter Jessica to get preselection for the seat he is vacating. It would have been the ultimate Ruddism. Jess immediately…
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…
Amidst the celebrations of ‘democracy’, the ALP leadership election - which gave rise to Bill Shorten as Labor leader - exposed a number of flaws in the new process.
AAP/Lukas Coch
New Labor leader Bill Shorten has vowed to continue on the path of party reform, but the latest ALP leadership battle failed to expose all the dangers of the new system. Not only is there the possibility…
What do we know so far of the policy positions of new opposition leader Bill Shorten?
AAP/Lukas Coch
In his pitch to Labor’s rank and file for the right to lead the federal parliamentary party, Bill Shorten declared that his aim - should he become prime minister - would be to serve on behalf of: … the…
Senior Lecturer in Political Science: Research Fellow at the Cairns Institute; Research Associate for Centre for Policy Futures, University of Queensland, James Cook University